Writing novels in multiple languages

How challenging is it for you to think in two different languages? Each language has its own nuances and cultural contexts. How do you navigate between the two?

To hear my answer to Dave’s question, tune in to episode 458 of the podcast Living the Next Chapter. I share my thoughts on this from 15:10-21:30.

Direct link to the podcast session:

https://pod.link/1607392975/episode/7d35acf28ff2b47132a258f6025c5d50

You can also read a summary of my answer here.

You have an ability that many other authors lack: you can write in more than one language. To you, this is normal. To everyone else, they think, I can't write in Swedish. There's no way I can do that. So, let's discuss this. How challenging is it for you to think in two different languages? Each language has its own nuances and cultural contexts. How do you navigate between the two?

I started out writing only in Swedish. Back then, I had a Scottish colleague who told me: 

“Annika, you should write in English. The Swedish market is too small.”

I laughed and told him I was glad he thought my English was good enough—but the language we used at work was nothing like the language used in writing fiction. So, I tucked the thought away.

Years later, I began to wonder if I could make it happen after all. I even asked a few people about translating my book, but it turned out to be far too expensive for me at the time. Writing was still more of a passion than a livelihood.

That’s when I thought: How hard can it be?

Well… it turned out to be quite hard. Translating Jenny, Jenny into To Love, Guilt and Motorcycles was one of the toughest writing challenges I’ve taken on. I wanted it to read naturally in English, not like a translation. So I worked with beta readers and found a wonderful editor who helped me ensure native speakers wouldn’t stumble over the language.

But of course, it wasn’t only about the words

My editor once flagged a scene where I described a summer night that never really got dark. She thought it was a mistake. I explained that in Sweden, in June, the sun hardly sets at all.

That moment made me realise how much cultural context was woven into my writing.

To help bridge those gaps, I added a short introduction to Love, Guilt and Motorcycles, pointing out some of the quirks that Swedish readers take for granted.

So yes—it’s never just about translation. It’s about carrying the culture, the atmosphere, and the unspoken things too.

 

Apocalypse Now, Again and Always?

Last summer, I visited an exhibition at the Göteborg Museum of Art: Apokalyps – Från yttersta domen till klimathotet (Apocalypse: From the Last Judgement to Climate Threat).

What struck me most wasn't a single artwork or theme, but the realisation that the idea of a looming catastrophe is nothing new. We have always believed the end is near. 

In Christianity—especially during the Reformation—people believed that disasters were punishment for immoral behaviour.

The 1800s brought fear of what industrialisation was doing to society. 

In the 1900s, world wars and nuclear threats took over. 

Today, climate change, AI, and totalitarian ideologies scare us.

The themes change, but fear remains.

One reason we keep returning to these doomsday scenarios is, paradoxically, comfort. 

The exhibition quotes research that explains our fascination with catastrophe as a form of psychological safety. 

As Brianna Wiest puts it: we worry about improbable events because they're "safe problems."

If we worry about an asteroid hitting Earth, we don’t have to deal with the conflict at work. If we focus on AI taking over the world, we can ignore the hard conversations with the neighbour.

While I easily shrug at global fears others carry, I always seem to have something to worry about. Will our cat fully heal from his injury? Will my son find work in a sector that just saw several bankruptcies? Will my business attract new clients?

The answer, of course, is that I don’t know.

That's where trust comes in. Instead of doubt, we need faith in life and in our ability to handle what comes. (I think it sounds even better in Swedish: vi behöver tillit istället för tvivel.) 

One artwork that I looked at for a long time was Hannaleena Heiska’s Rachael #3, inspired by the first Blade Runner film. 

I only recently saw the film, which was made in 1982 and set in the then-distant future of 2019. It’s gritty and dark, and while it had flying cars, it didn’t predict smartphones.

No matter how much we think about the future and try to predict it, there’s always something we can’t imagine yet.

We don't know what's coming, but if we can drop the fear, we might see that whatever comes can be even better than what we can currently imagine.