Fika

Today I went to Fika, which is a Swedish cafe. In Arab Street. In Singapore. Serving food which is halal. There's a fair few collisions of different cuisines, cultures and nations going on there. A pity, perhaps, that all I had was some cheesecake. I suppose the horsemeatballs would probably have been out of stock.

Great! Depressed!

Sakert, the Swedish-speaking simulacrum of Hello Saferide, has rerecorded songs from her first album in Swedish, in English. Confused? I was...

The Preacher

I had a horrible and yet quite dull dream this morning about being assailed by zombies while living in the swamplands of south-east England, which I woke from confused and slightly terrified. There was a lot of mud involved.

I blame this dream on the mental upset I had from reading The Preacher, a Swedish detective novel I picked up for three Canadian dollars in the Value Village in Halifax. Just like The Girl With A Dragon Tattoo it's a Scandinavian story that seems to have been written by somebody with a tin ear for dialogue, a wilful ignorance of characterisation and plotting, and a translator who was happy to remain entirely faithful to the source material.

The Match King

Last week I read The Match King, a book by Frank Portnoy with an eye-catching cover that I first saw in an airport bookshop last year, but had to wait an age for it to appear in paperback. It's the story of Ivar Kreuger, a Swedish match tycoon whose company failed spectacularly in the 1930s, following the Wall Street Crash.