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Fredrik Backman became a literary phenomenon with the publication of his debut novel, A man named Uwe, 10 years ago in Sweden. The book spent 90 weeks on the New York Times bestseller list, and the film adaptation was nominated for Best Foreign Language Film at the Academy Awards, with an upcoming American remake starring Tom Hanks. Backman’s next titles – incl Beartown and Anxious people — were also hugely popular and were adapted as series for HBO and Netflix. In total, his books have sold 12 million copies worldwide in 46 languages.
As a clumsy, anxious child, Backman fell in love with sports and books. His latest title, The winners, completes his powerful Beartown trilogy, which focuses on a small town and its youth hockey club in the forest of northern Sweden. Sensitive and timely, it explores both the light and dark sides of “hockey culture.”
Backman was born in Stockholm in 1981. Eleanor spoke to him from his home there.
The people of Beartown
“I think first of all [the residents of Beartown] are sustainable. It’s very, very cold. It’s one thing to live in the countryside. But it’s quite another to live in the middle of the forest. Kind of isolated. It’s also a fact that I enjoyed telling a story about people who are so affected by nature.
There’s a certain sense of pride that this is a tough town – and that makes them a tough people, too.
“What I would like to explain about the people of Beartown is that they live there voluntarily. They live there by choice. They like it hard. Not everyone can do this. There’s a certain sense of pride that this is a tough town — and it also makes them a tough people.”
Almost a fairy tale
“The fable or tale of telling a story, that’s the way I always tell stories. I don’t think it’s always intentional. I always come back to it. I think it comes from the fact that I don’t want to be a writer. That was never my goal. I want to be a storyteller.
“When I tell you something, I want to feel like I’m telling this story just for you. I wanted it to feel like we’re sitting across from each other at a table and I say, “Do you want to hear a story?” And you say, “Okay.”
“Then I try to tell that story as well as I can, as fun as I can, as exciting as I can, as tense as I can. I’m trying to tell you a really, really good story.”
The power of sports stories
“The best sports stories are always mythical. They are always almost supernatural, incredible. All great sports stories are about an incredible hit, or an impossible catch, or something happened at the end of the game that changed everything.
The best sports stories are always mythical. It’s always almost supernatural, unbelievable.
“That’s why we watch sports – because we wait for those moments. This is the reason why I fell in love with sports and literature at the same time. When I was about five years old, I fell in love with both because they were my escape from reality.”
Writing out of anxiety
“I had a breakdown in the winter of 2017. My career had started to go very well abroad. I had done two American tours and felt incredibly uncomfortable. I gave interviews, or went on tour, or sat on stage and I FELT like an actor. I felt like, well, I’m pretending to be the author you want me to be. And I had an identity crisis and felt so uncomfortable. I still feel very uncomfortable on stage.
“I needed to write, not write a book, I just needed to write because that’s how I organize my thoughts. I started doing that and that was the beginning of Anxious people.
“I had this idea that I was going to write a comedy. I’m going to write something simple, straight comedy. Of course, I failed miserably. It is not even considered by many to be a simple comedy. It’s much more serious than I intended it to be. That happened Anxious people. I couldn’t help but throw in all the things I was thinking about during my breakdown and during my recovery, all these things I was struggling with.”
Closing a trilogy
“[Writing The Winners] it was scary because I’ve never written a series like this. I felt like, “Can I find that tone of voice again? Can I find these characters and make them believable again? Can I? Can I go back to this world and make it real again? Or is it now lost. Can I do it without letting people down?” That was my fear.
I don’t want to do this if I don’t have anything new to say. There has to be a new story worth telling.
“I don’t want to do this if I don’t have anything new to tell. There has to be a new story worth telling.
“It was a scary and exhausting experience, my only hope is that people feel when they read The winners that this was written by someone who gave it their all. He left nothing behind. That’s all there was. He gave it 100 percent because I did it.”
Fredrik Backman’s comments have been edited for length and clarity.
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