Ia Genberg explains how she never wants to write about herself: “I’m not really that interesting. Why would I write about myself? And why would anyone want to read it? It’s super uninteresting. I can write about my experiences, but I have to be a good liar to make it appear true.” 

She talks about how she started working as a nurse, originally from journalism, but while writing The Details, she needed a bread-and-butter job: “Combining fiction with journalism was hard for me. I use the same fuel no matter what I write. It’s the same letters that are exhausted per se in journalism. Lots of writers can combine the two. I can’t.”

Genberg goes on to explain how, as a nurse, she finds a value that she can’t find in writing: “By definition, nursing is meaningful. After moving a comma around for three weeks, I sometimes think, “What am I doing?” But being a nurse is always meaningful. You help people, and that’s always rewarding.”

Ia Genberg (b. 1967) is a Swedish novelist, journalist, and nurse. In 2012, she debuted her first novel, Sweet Friday. Her novel The Details won the August Prize in 2022, and the English translation was shortlisted for the 2024 International Booker Prize.

Ia Genberg was interviewed by Klaus Rothstein at the Louisiana Literature Festival at the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Denmark, in August 2023. In the video, Ia Genberg reads an excerpt from her novel The Details in Swedish Detaljerna, 2021.

Camera: Rasmus Quistgaard  

Produced and edited by Astrid Agnes Hald  

Copyright: Louisiana Channel, Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, 2024.  

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