Photo © Kajsa Göransson

Mirja Unge

Mirja Unge (b. 1973) has been praised for her distinctive literary style and has received several prestigious awards for her books, among them Tidningen Vi’s Literature Prize, Aftonbladet’s Literature Prize and the Aniara Prize.

She made her debut in 1998 with the novel The Words Came from the Mouths which was awarded the Katapult Prize for best debut.

For the past decade, Unge has also gained acclaim as a playwright, and a collection of her plays was published in 2015, with the title Where is Everybody.

Her most recent novel, Dog Nights (2024), was shortlisted for the August Prize.

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Cover by Sara R. Acedo

Dog Nights (Norstedts, Sweden 2024)

Nadja returns to the village where she grew up after many years in Stockholm. Her childhood home has been abandoned for quite some time and her parents, once hippies, have grown old and left the gruelling country life behind them. She finds shift work at a youth home and gets herself settled in the isolated house, with the neighbour’s runaway cat as her only companion.

Not much has changed in the village and most of the faces remain the same. Ellie, her once partner in crime, has gained weight and a brood of kids; Sauli, her old flame, spends his nights in the local pizzeria following a motorcycle accident which left him in a wheelchair; lonesome Lars is still living with his mother, playing his piano and scanning the personal ads; the Sawmill Queen, although elderly and frail, is still exercising her power, while Anna, Olof and Didrik still remain in their unconventional love triangle.

But what concerns Nadia is that the alarming authority and violence that once caused her to leave, is still as tangible, as if it had been passed down to a new generation. Unsettling memories start to haunt her as she also suspects there is something strange going on. Someone tries to run her off the road and a teenage girl at the youth home is found dead. At the same time there is a black dog that keeps appearing in the most unexpected places.

Dog Nights is an evocative and sinister country noir with a large and disparate cast of characters, conveyed through Unge’s idiosyncratic prose and deadpan sense of humour.

Praises for Dog Nights

“Using dark brushstrokes, Mirja Unge paints a vivid portrait of a community where the village norms are deeply rooted, where stray dogs roam and where people drink lager in the car on the way to the pizzeria. Dog Nights, a detective novel without a detective, is a linguistic machinery that jerks and moves along desolate roads. Suddenly and mercilessly the complex reality and raw beauty of the countryside comes to light.” – The August Prize Jury

“Mirja Unge has an absolutely remarkable knack for the things that are buried beneath the surface, inside people, in the everyday life, in silence and in the prose. She writes in such a rhythmically awkward and unexpected manner that one has no choice but to follow. I have always appreciated that particular growing force in her poetic colloquial language. Her distinctiveness and sensibility when she touches upon everything that remains unresolved or undelivered. In her new novel Dog Nights, Unge also perfects what she established early in her authorship: a pessimism of her own that slowly cracks when it is hit by the strokes of light and hope.” – Borås Tidning

“In Unge’s books, life is agonising and has always been. Girls are continuously under threat, need to hide their bodies, and yet they are ignored. They’re good at silence, but to capture something vital in words is more difficult. Was it really that bad, her mother asked her in the car home from the parent-teacher meeting, that time when the boys in the class had been confronted with what they had done to Nadja. Silence in the car before her mother puts on some music – the Rolling Stones – and pats a ring-clad finger against the wheel. Nothing is the same after that, Nadja has caught sight of her mother who doesn’t see her. The teenager becomes an adult, but the adult remains a teenager. Mirja Unge doesn’t waste many words on that transformation, a ring with a freshwater pearl drumming to the car stereo is enough. The insight hits you like a punch to the gut. To read Mirja Unge is to experience such breathtaking moments, not just once but several times.” – Dagens Nyheter

"Dog Nights is gripping, raw and tender-hearted literature. Unge is a clear favorite among Nordic authors, and a literary acquaintance of the rarest kind.”
– Dagbladet (NO)

“Mirja Unge’s harrowing, intensely captivating, and remarkably well-written novel is highlight in an already impressive literary career.”
– Rune Christiansen, award-winning author

“I’ve been following Mirja Unge ever since she debuted in 1998 with the novel The Words Came from the Mouths. I've always read a lot of Swedish literature, but then I lost touch with it somehow, and we drifted apart, Sweden and I. I think it was Mirja Unge who made me pick it up again. I knew exactly who she was writing about. Her prose was so original, her sentences so unusual and yet so natural—like breathing, if you don’t think too hard about the fact that you’re actually breathing. And her new novel, Dog Nights, outdoes most things I’ve read. Dog Nights is the coolest reading experience I’ve had in a long time. It kicks off at full speed and then just keeps going. There’s a kind of restraint in the prose, but underneath, there’s a rumbling, a pounding—it is raw and utterly alive. There aren’t many authors who write books this good.” – Per Petterson, award-winning author

Bibliography

Hundnätter / Dog Nights (Norstedts, Sweden, 2024)
Hundenetter (Forlaget Oktober, Norway, 2025, in translation by Bjorn Alex Herrman)
Jag går och lever / I Live on Tomorrow (Norstedts, Sweden, 2018)
Jeg går och lever (Forlaget Oktober, Norway, 2020, in translation by Bjorn Alex Herrman)
Var är alla och andra pjäser / Where is Everybody and Other Plays (Norstedts, Sweden, 2015)
Brorsan är mätt / It Was Just Yesterday: Stories (Norstedts, Sweden, 2007)
It Was Just Yesterday (Comma Press, UK, 2011, in translation by Kari Dickson)
Bata je sit (Heliks, Serbia, 2018, in translation by Milena Podolsak)
Motsols / Widdershins (Norstedts, Sweden, 2005)
Motsols (Forlaget Oktober, Norway, 2006, in translation by Bjorn Alex Herrman)
Mod uret (Athene, Denmark, 2006, in translation by Pia Juul)
Järnnätter / Iron Nights (Anamma, Sweden, 2000)
Jernnetter (Forlaget Oktober, Norway, 2002, in translation by Bjorn Alex Herrman)
Det var ur munnen orden kom / The Words Came from the Mouths (Anamma, Sweden, 1998)

Awards

2018 – Shortlisted for Studieförbundet Vuxenskolan’s Author Prize (Krokas)
2024 – Shortlisted for the August Prize
2024 – Awarded the Stina Aronson Prize
2019 – Awarded the Eyvind Johnson Prize
2019 – Awarded the Aniara Prize
2016 – Awarded the Dobloug Prize
2008 – Awarded the Alfhild Prize
2007 – Awarded Aftonbladet’s Literature Prize
2005 – Awarded Tidningen Vi:s Literature Prize
1999 – Awarded the Katapult Prize for Best Debut

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