Synopses & Reviews
Summer 1978. A young boy disappears without a trace from a summer cabin. His mother claims he was carried away by a giant. He is never found.
Twenty-five years later, another child goes missing. This time there’s a lead, a single photograph taken by Susso Myrén. She’s devoted her life to the search for trolls, legendary giants known as stallo who can control human thoughts and assume animal form. Convinced that the trolls are real, she follows the trail of missing children to northern Sweden. But humans, some part stallo themselves, have been watching over the creatures for generations, and this hidden society of protectors won’t hesitate to close its deadly ranks.
Mixing folklore and history, suspense and the supernatural, The Shapeshifters is an extraordinary journey into a frozen land where myth bleeds into reality.
Review
“A fantastic novel in every sense of the word…not only because Spjut has accomplished the masterstroke of writing convincingly about the existence of trolls and other mythical creatures in the Nordic forests, but also because all this unfolds in a language that captures the everyday reality we know so well, with such precision and exquisite style that the words seem to sparkle on the page.” Karl Ove Knausgård
Synopsis
Far off the grid in northern Sweden, a small network of people have been tasked with hiding the last remaining trolls from the public eye, and one young woman will do whatever it takes to bring the truth to light, in this literary thriller that is "intensely riveting and constantly surprising" (Karl-Ove Knausgard).
Synopsis
A fantastic novel in every sense of the word...about the existence of trolls and other mythical creatures in the Nordic forests . . . -- Karl Ove Knausgard
Summer 1978.
A young boy disappears without a trace from a summer cabin. His mother claims he was carried away by a giant.
He is never found.
Twenty-five years later, another child goes missing. This time there's a lead, a single photograph taken by Susso Myr n. She's devoted her life to the search for trolls, legendary giants known as stallo, who can control human thoughts and assume animal form. Convinced that the trolls are real, she follows the trail of missing children to northern Sweden.
But humans, some part stallo themselves, have been watching over the creatures for generations, and this hidden society of protectors won't hesitate to close its deadly ranks.
Mixing folklore and history, suspense and the supernatural, The Shapeshifters is an extraordinary journey into a frozen land where myth bleeds into reality.
About the Author
STEFAN SPJUT has worked as a literary critic for the Swedish newspaper Svenska Dagbladet and the culture editor for Norbottens-Kuriren. Stallo is his second novel, the first to be available in English.