Maria Gripe
Maria Gripe was born in 1923 in Vaxholm and moved to Orebro at the age of six.
She made her literary breakthrough with the three books about Hugo and Josefin in the 1960s. During the same period she wrote “Pappa Pellerin’s Daughter”, a contemporary novel about a lonely, headstrong girl. After the poetic and atmospheric tales “The Glassblower’s Children”, “In the Time of the Bells” and “The Land Beyond”, she returned to reality in the 1970s with the five Elvis books, featuring a serious-minded boy who became a classic figure in Swedish children’s literature, unforgettably interpreted in Harald Gripe’s illustrations. In the 80s came what was perhaps her best known and most loved books: “The Dung Beetle Flies in the Twilight” and “Agnes Cecilia”, as well as the four books in the Shadow series.
Maria Gripe has received a number of awards and prizes for her work, both in Sweden and abroad. Among others, she has received the Nils Holgersson plaque, the newspaper Expressen’s Heffaklump, the Astrid Lindgren Prize, the H C Andersen Medal, the Hjalmar Bergman Prize, and Litteraturfrämjandet’s major prize (together with Harald Gripe). In 2005 Bonnier Carlsen introduced the Maria Gripe Prize, an annual literary prize awarded to a Swedish author published by the company.
Books by Maria Gripe
Agnes Cecilia
Maria Gripe
Maria Gripe’s Agnes Cecilia is one of the most classic and widely read Swedish young adult novels. A ghost story that is just as eerie today as when it was first published.Nora has a creeping feeling of something inexplicable, of someone suddenly sta…
The Dor Beetle Flies at Dusk
Maria Gripe
When Jonas, Annika, and David are watering flowers at the Selander farm, they find old letters sent to an Emelie who lived in the 18th century. The letters mention a three-thousand-year-old Egyptian statue in Ringaryd, where they live. Does it still…
The Glassblower’s Children
Maria Gripe
Albert the Glassblower and Sofia are the loving parents of little Klas and Klara. Albert makes the most beautiful glass bowls and vases (unfortunately they are so impractical that no one will buy them), while Sofia supports the family by working in t…
The White Shadows in The Forest
Maria Gripe
The Shadow on the Stone Bench
Maria Gripe
The Shadow series by Maria Gripe is set in Sweden in the 1910s. It centres on the friendship that the upper-middle-class girl Berta develops with her family’s maid Carolin. Carolin seems to be hiding many secrets she doesn’t like to reveal – is she…
Hugo and Josefin
Maria Gripe
