kagablog

Oscar Hemer was born in 1954 in the Swedish town of Linköping , but moved as a six-year old boy to Malmö, where he grew up. His first novel, Coyote , was published in 1983. It tells the story of a young man’s year-long odyssey through Latin America in the early 1970s. Hemer’s fifth novel, Santiago , the second in a planned trilogy on Scandinavia and Latin America , will be published later this year. He has also written several books of essay and reportage and has worked as an arts journalist and editor in different media – predominantly newspapers. He has also done some literary translation on the side, mainly from Spanish.

Hemer’s extensive travels to many parts of the world, not only Latin America but also Africa and Asia , play an important role in his work, both as a fiction writer and as a journalist. He spent two decisive years in Ethiopia in the late 1980s. In 2000, Hemer quit as arts editor of the main regional daily of Southern Sweden, Sydsvenska Dagbladet , and started a late academic career at the then new Malmö University ’s School of Arts and Communication. As a senior lecturer in journalistic and literary creation he has been the coordinator of a master programme in Communication for Development, and is currently embarking on a research project entitled Fiction’s Truth . Its intention is to investigate fiction and its claim on truth in relation to the other two main writing practices – journalism and academic writing.

He is particularly interested in literary and fictional strategies that consciously transgress the genre boundaries, in a deliberate attempt to achieve and communicate a deeper understanding of reality. This could also be a description of His own writing, which consciously defies genre classifications. His latest published book, Äventyraren vid världens ände ( The Adventurer at the World’s End ), 2003, is a mixture of essay, travelogue and memoir, focusing on the Ethiopian city of Harar and three adventurers with strong affiliations with Harar, and Ethiopia : Richard Burton, Arthur Rimbaud and Wilfred Thesiger. Their stories are intertwined with Hemer’s own memories from Ethiopia , recaptured in another corner of Africa : the medina of Marrakech. Oscar Hemer lives in Dalby, 30 kms from Malmö, with his wife and three children.

Bibliography

Äventyraren vid världens ände (Essay), 2003, Atlantis

Cosmos & Aska (Novel), 2000, Atlantis

Kuba & Kina (Essays), 1996, Studiekamraten

Bortom regnbågen. Historien om Artur R. (Novel), 1996, Atlantis

Andra städer (Essays), 1993, Aegis

Peninsula (Essays), 1989, Agora

Hennes mörka hjärta (Novel), 1989, Alfabeta

Coyote (Novel), 1983, Nordan

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