Biography
Swedish writer Lina Wolff has lived and worked in Italy and Spain. During her years in Valencia and Madrid, she began to write her short story collection Many People Die Like You. Bret Easton Ellis and the Other Dogs, her first novel, was awarded the prestigious Vi Magazine Literature Prize and shortlisted for the prestigious 2013 Swedish Radio Award for Best Novel of the Year. It was published by And Other Stories in 2018, followed by her second novel, The Polyglot Lovers, in 2019. Wolff now lives in southern Sweden.
More Info
- Read more about the mordantly funny, dryly sensual Bret Easton Ellis and the Other Dogs.
Reviews
Eithne Farry
Daily Mail
'Spirited . . . darkly funny.'
Baya Simons
Financial Times
'Witty, acerbic short stories . . . wickedly thrilling.'
Catherine Taylor
Irish Times
‘Wolff revels in turning the tables on expectation and convention. Each story [starts] without preamble, ostensibly casual, but always with authority.’
Dazed
‘[Wolff] explores the choices we make when we think no one is watching.’
Stuart Walton
Hong Kong Review of Books
‘Nothing thwarts quite as excruciatingly as thwarted desire. Wanting what they can’t have is a speciality of many of these characters.’
Kirkus Reviews
‘Wolff excels with the disaffected and the weird.’
Marta Balcewicz
Ploughshares
‘Wolff shows us that while conventionality is, indeed, death, the opposite isn’t true: unconventionality isn’t life, and it won’t automatically make you happy.’
Francesca Brown
The Stylist
‘Dark, wicked and funny.’
Booksellers on Many People Die Like You
‘A good short story collection feeds our desire for interesting characters and good storytelling without demanding a large time commitment. Lina Wolff’s Many People Die Like You certainly meets those criteria. Her characters traverse compelling plots that often take them and us to unexpected and often uncomfortable places. Each of her well-crafted stories ends with enough left unexplained to keep us thinking beyond that last page and with the lingering pleasure of a story well-told. I do not often re-read, but these stories have enough complexity to bring me back to them again.’ Nancy Sims-West, Raven Book Store, Lawrence, KS
Arbetarbladet
‘An immediate success for Lina Wolff ... Many People Die Like You is a more than promising debut. Lina Wolff is a skilled stylist and a good storyteller.’
Skånska Dagbladet
‘Stories so funny your neighbours would thank you if you read them aloud.’
Helsingborgs Dagblad
‘Many People Die Like You is full of life in motion. Depicted with such certainty that even the narrator’s voice must at times give way to the swelling language. And so, Lina Wolff has arrived as one of the important voices in Swedish literature. Not least because of the freedom the texts create for themselves. A freedom full of pleasure and humor alongside ever-present earnestness.’
Kultureytt, Radio SR P1
‘Lina Wolff either quickly visits people who are happening to have a good, perhaps heightened conversation. Or, she tells a story with a beginning and end. Two approaches to the short story, here both are equally exciting to read.’
Svenska Dagbladet
‘It's a matter of course of Lina Wolff's way of writing, as though each formulation and twist has been there all along, just waiting to be written down by her. Perhaps it is a matter of self-esteem, combined with a drive that draws you instantly and relentlessly into her stories. / ... / Wolff creates a hypnotic pull around her characters, making the reader wish they could remain in the story, how crass and chewy the lives portrayed can seem. The main characters are as often men as they are women, and Wolff writes with equal ease from a female and a male perspective. Human as humans are: sad and comical, petty and grand.’
Femina magazine
‘Brilliant language, twisted intrigue and black humour.’
Vi magazine
‘Fantastic. Quiet, thoughtful and, in spite of all the suffering, very funny.’
Ángel Gurría-Quintana
Financial Times
‘The Swedish author of Bret Easton Ellis and Other Dogs enjoys nothing more than savaging the myths of male authorship. Here she lays into notions of male genius, as her protagonist, Ellinor, finds herself entangled with a literary critic who is fixated on a narcissistic author who is in turn obsessed with real-life enfant terrible of French letters, Michel Houellebecq.’
Joanna Kavenna
The Guardian
'A highly enjoyable absurdist comedy about love and desperation'
Lee Langley
The Spectator
'The Polyglot Lovers' blithe disregard for social norms and finer feelings is exhilarating; it’s pitiless and scathingly funny.'
Yelena Moskovich
The TLS
'The Polyglot Lovers is a quiet rapture - unsparing, startling, mesmeric, and told with the soberest of grins.'
Anna Vilner
The Arkansas International
‘Wolff’s novel raises the following questions: how do we define literary genius, and who do we allow to define it for us?’
Sam Sacks
‘Fiction Chronicle’, Wall Street Journal
‘Mr. Houellebecq’s books diagnose the soullessness of contemporary liberal democracies, where people futilely seek meaning for their lives in pornographic sex. The Polyglot Lovers shifts the focus from Mr. Houellebecq’s destructive men to the women who are both victims of and accomplices to the cycle of narcissism. In Ms. Wolff’s telling, intellectuals—the writers and theorists who wax poetically about falling in love—are the worst of the abusers.’
Book of the Week
Publishers Weekly
‘The edifice of male genius is annihilated in this galvanizing novel from Wolff…Firing on all cylinders from beginning to end, this story pulses with intellect and vitality unmatched by the literary barons it deposes.’
Malcolm Forbes
Star Tribune (Minneapolis)
‘Wolff upsets the applecart, mercilessly mocking male hegemony and skewering literary pretensions. What could have been angry and strident is instead caustic and mischievous: both a bracing wind and a breath of fresh air. Wolff’s constant supply of fire, bite and wit are compelling forces.'
Michael Orthofer
The Complete Review
‘The Polyglot Lovers is an amusing take on modern life (literary and otherwise) and relationships between the sexes. All in all it makes for an interesting polychromatic fiction, a surprisingly ebullient story—carried along nicely by Wolff's entertaining and easygoing presentation—in a cleverly structured novel, its three separate parts neatly coming together by the end.’
Gabe Habash
'I loved The Polyglot Lovers by Lina Wolff (translated by Saskia Vogel), a funny, biting, and exhilaratingly shifty novel about literary revenge and the male ego.'
Publishers Weekly
'The edifice of male genius is annihilated in this galvanizing novel from Wolff. [...] Wolff orchestrates her divergent plots into riveting harmony, but more striking is the audacity with which she reveals Max and Ruben’s reckless egoism. 'I’m an autodidact in male devastation,' Claudia declares before sticking the final pin in Max’s inflated persona. Wolff’s novel proves the necessity of cultivating such a specialty. Firing on all cylinders from beginning to end, this story pulses with intellect and vitality unmatched by the literary barons it deposes.'
Heather Cleary
Bookmarks (a LitHub channel)
'Keep an eye out for this one: The Polyglot Lovers is one of those rare birds that is both smart as hell and, in the parlance of our times, 'pace-y.'
Mary Ellen Quinn
BookList
‘A sharp-eyed, sometimes surreal, often funny take on male-female power dynamics.’
Library Journal
'Oddly compelling . . . a European postmodern novel steeped in alienation and ennui.'
Kirkus Reviews
‘whip-smart and deliciously cynical ... smart, funny, and sad in turns’
Yuri Herrera
‘Lina Wolff is one of my favourite writers of our time. From apparently innocuous starting points, she weaves the darkness into her stories and lets men expose themselves as pitiable when they thought they were being witty and cynical. Her writing detonates just when you are smiling calmly.’
Booksellers on The Polyglot Lovers
‘The Polyglot Lovers is electric – it crackles with wit, ferocity and intelligence. We are lucky to have Lina Wolff.’ - Elizabeth Perry, City Books, Hove
‘The Polyglot Lovers is a testament to the temperamental nature of love and power, and the complexities that come with asserting one’s own agency. This book is proof that irreverence and wit have a place in feminist theory. I was captivated from page one.’- Cristina Rodriguez, Deep Vellum Books, Dallas, TX
‘Reading The Polyglot Lovers, I was struck once again by just how sharp a writer Wolff is. There are few writers out there capable of besting her. If she has a kindred spirit in contemporary fiction, it's Ottessa Moshfegh, with whom she shares a darkly funny and unflinching sensibility.’ - Gary Perry, Foyles, London
‘The Polyglot Lovers is an audacious and often very funny reckoning with the ways men view women by a novelist of rare talents. Lina Wolff, equal parts ferocious and sly, has proven herself one of our indispensable writers with this uppercut of a book.’ - Stephen Sparks, Point Reyes Books, Point Reyes, CA
‘The Polyglot Lovers is a bracing and sharp exploration of identity, gender, and literature, told in prose and images that constantly unsettle the reader. It is also an exquisite act of literary revenge and should confirm Lina Wolff's status as a major voice in world literature.’ - Josh Cook, Porter Square Books, Cambridge, MA
‘An exquisite and insightful dive into the delights and horrors of our constant search for human connection, and what happens when women decide to set fire to the literary male gaze.’ - Emma Ramadan, Riffraff, Providence, RI
‘I absolutely loved it. Wolff's characters come to life with poignancy and dark humour. The Polyglot Lovers cuts to the heart.’ - Tom Harris, Mr B’s Emporium, Bath
‘Lina Wolff's The Polyglot Lovers is a punch you in the face, grab you by the collar, and throw you across the room kind of novel. Brilliantly written, incisive and engaging, it is a stunning work. If you haven't yet (and why haven't you?) now would be a good time to add Wolff to your to-be-read pile.’ - Tom Flynn, Volumes Bookcafe, Chicago
Joanna Walsh
‘Like Virginie Despentes and Elfriede Jelinek, Lina Wolff stares the reader right in the eyes and speaks in a voice uniquely her own: The Polyglot Lovers is clear, stark, devastating.’
Sjón
‘The Polyglot Lovers is storytelling as a martial arts combination move, delivered with precision, style and glee.’
Elle (France)
‘From a Swedish lake to Italian aristocrats, Wolff is in full control of her surprises and mischievously mocks the male gaze.’
Le Figaro (France)
‘A singular novel, sometimes brutal, certainly merciless.’
Livres Hebdo (France)
‘The Polyglot Lovers is funny, intelligent and always surprising. Complex and human (all too human . . .), its characters are never the spokesperson for anything but themselves, and certainly not for Lina Wolff, who allows them to live and deal as best they can with their heavy solitude.’
L’Obs (France)
‘Strange and magnificent.’
NPO Radio 1 (Holland)
‘Wolff evokes human (power) relationships with skill and ingenuity.’
NRC (Holland)
‘Wolff knows how to convey the loneliness in and between lovers, which seems to come directly from how a man imagines a woman. [...] Let us imagine instead, Lina Wolff’s novel says, a new language for our desire for the other.’
Swedish Book Review
‘A magnificent novel: funny, clever, engaging and surprising. Its characters are complex, unpredictable and occasionally unlikeable, but never less than totally believable and deeply human.’
Kulturnytt, Sweden Radio
‘Dizzying . . . Lina Wolff has written a many-voiced, meandering, feminist, arresting and rather provocative novel.’
Svenska Dagbladet
‘It’s been a long time since I read something this unique, seething, wilful.’
Borås Tidning
‘What a novel! I’m totally charmed! I was completely absorbed by The Polyglot Lovers . . . it's really, really fabulous. Every sentence is great. [This] is a book to read and discover and read over and over again.’
Kristofer Folkhammar
Aftonbladet
‘Wolff has written a kind of blackened, heart-rending satire on gender roles, in which the tempo of the pacily inventive – and downright gorgeous – prose complicates, enlivens and plays with the eloquent lovers she’s taken it upon herself to portray.’
Sydsvenskan
‘You know when a novel is so thrilling that you just don’t want it to end? That’s what it was like reading Lina Wolff’s third book The Polyglot Lovers. I had high expectations . . . and yet they were surpassed.’
Library Journal on Bret Easton Ellis and the Other Dogs
‘Oddly compelling . . . a European postmodern novel steeped in alienation and ennui.’
Kirkus Reviews on Bret Easton Ellis and the Other Dogs
‘The author demonstrates a marvellous command of language and creates characters with real depth, lending the book a sensual vibe and an acerbic wit that force its emotional truths to rise above the grunge of its hard-boiled setting. A poetic, unsentimental drama that offers a meditation on love in all its disparate forms.’
Sarah Perry on Bret Easton Ellis and the Other Dogs
The Guardian
‘Wolff’s prose has a quality of “otherness” entirely in keeping with the surreal atmosphere of the novel. This strange, provocative debut sits well alongside the work of Roxane Gay, Katherine Angel, Maggie Nelson, Zoe Pilger and Miranda July . . . a cool, clever and fierce addition to the canon of modern feminist literature.’
Lucy Scholes on Bret Easton Ellis and the Other Dogs
The Independent
‘A filmic offering . . . channelling the spirit of Pedro Almodóvar. A thoroughly invigorating novel.’
Sarah Perry
The Guardian
‘Wolff’s prose has a quality of “otherness” entirely in keeping with the surreal atmosphere of the novel. This strange, provocative debut sits well alongside the work of Roxane Gay, Katherine Angel, Maggie Nelson, Zoe Pilger and Miranda July . . . a cool, clever and fierce addition to the canon of modern feminist literature.’
Lucy Scholes
The Independent
‘[A] filmic offering . . . channelling the spirit of Pedro Almodóvar. A thoroughly invigorating novel.’
The Skinny
‘Wolff has had enough of the big swinging dicks of masculine literature. [Bret Easton Ellis and the Other Dogs is] clever and challenging and distinctive.’
Kirkus Reviews
‘The author demonstrates a marvellous command of language and creates characters with real depth, lending the book a sensual vibe and an acerbic wit that force its emotional truths to rise above the grunge of its hard-boiled setting. A poetic, unsentimental drama that offers a meditation on love in all its disparate forms.’