In 2020, Hanna Johansson released her debut novel Antiquity. Now, four years later, the book has been translated into English, introducing her work to an international audience. Antiquity delves into themes of obsession, sexuality, family, and belonging, with some describing it as a “queer Lolita” story. We sat down with Hanna to discuss the experience of having her novel translated, her popular newsletter “La Douleur Exquise”, and what's next on her creative journey.

Ulrika Lindqvist: You released your debut Antiquity in 2020, how has the response—both critically and from readers—shaped your perception of the novel over time?

Hanna Johansson: The response has helped me see the novel more clearly. While I was writing it, I was trying to find something out, not quite knowing where I was going to end up. Once it’s published it, of course, becomes something else, to me, that is – a claim rather than a question, I guess – and it’s been fascinating to find out how it resonates with other people, what they find beautiful or annoying about it.

UL: Antiquity was translated and published in English earlier this year, how did it feel to have your work translated and meet a new readership four years after its release?

HJ: Exciting! It was interesting seeing the novel come out in a completely different context, and I don’t just mean the context of language here – there’s also the context of translated literature, which I’m really happy to be in. I feel very privileged to have been translated, and that things keep happening to the novel long after I finished it.

UL: Were you involved in choosing Kira Josefsson as the translator? If so, what made you choose her?

HJ: She chose me, actually, and I’m eternally grateful for it! We met through my partner, Sanna, who’s also a writer, about a year before Antiquity was published. After the book came out, Kira got in touch about translating a sample to pitch to publishers. I’m far from alone in thinking she’s a fantastic translator – her English translation of Ia Genberg’s The Details was shortlisted for the International Booker Prize, and there are some really exciting translations that have been published recently, like Judith Kiros’ O and Quynh Tran’s Shade and Breeze.

UL: What was the inspiration behind Antiquity? Did any particular events, ideas, or themes inspire you more during the writing process?

HJ: I always wanted to write something about a trio, and more specifically a trio where two people seem to naturally belong together – like a romantic couple or, as it turned out in the end, a mother and a daughter – while the third character was to be a stranger. I’ve always been very preoccupied with estrangement. I was also preoccupied with queer tropes, particularly tropes about queer womanhood, like the cliché of a lesbian who preys on girls like a vampire, or the sad, lonely lesbian woman who commits suicide at the end of the story, or the much more benign cliché of lesbian lovers being mistaken for sisters. And then there’s the setting, the backdrop of antiquity. The novel is set in a Greek town called Ermoupoli, which is actually not a very old town, but whose name and architecture evokes ancient Greece. This fantasy of ancient Greece becomes, in the novel, a metaphor for fantasies or notions about familial belonging and love and desire.

UL: After covering such diverse cultural fields in journalism—fashion, theatre, literature, art—did venturing into novel writing feel like a big step or a natural progression? And is there an area of culture you’re particularly passionate about exploring?

HJ: With the benefit of hindsight, my view now is that my writing for many years as a critic was always a way to enable me to write fiction, which I always felt more passionately about. So in one sense venturing into novel writing really was a natural progression – but I might have felt differently about this had I never published a novel. Writing fiction always felt luxurious, and it still does. I’m currently working as a literature and art critic and an art editor, and I think art writing excites me most at the moment, partly because to me, it resembles literary writing the most. A cornerstone of art criticism is really writing ekphrasis, and some of the best art writers have been poets, like John Ashbery.

UL: As both you and your partner, Sanna Samuelsson, are writers, do you often read or critique each other’s work? How does living in a writing household influence your creativity?

HJ:I’m a little more shy than her when it comes to reading or critiquing each other’s work, but we do read each other. She’s a critic too, so quite often we ask the other to read through short things where we need reassurance that we’re making sense. Most of all, living with her has taught me to take my own art seriously, to be curious, to carve out time for my writing, and not second guess so much. Living with another writer is lovely, I think, because we both understand that we sometimes need to disappear to someplace that’s hidden from the other, and while our relationship is really very close and intimate, having access to this hidden place makes the other appear endlessly mysterious. I’ve been thinking for years about a quote from a Birgitta Trotzig interview where she notes that it is her more or less unremarkable and comfortable home life that allows her to be so dark and disturbing in her writing. I strive for that as well.

UL:I follow and love your newsletter La Douleur Exquise about Sex and the City, And Just like that and sometimes other cultural phenomenons. What inspired you to start it, and might we expect a future essay collection from you?

HJ: Thank you – I’m always very happy to hear that it’s bringing joy to someone else, since it’s such a supremely stupid project. What prompted me to start it was that I’d been commissioned to write a review of And Just Like That and was left with something like four excess pages that I had to cut from my first draft, and since Sanna’s never seen Sex and the City, I think she would only have put up with me talking about it for a limited time. Back when I started the newsletter I was also in an MFA program for literary composition where I had experienced a bit of writer’s block, and diving into something as corny and frivolous as writing insanely detailed recaps of a TV show was incredibly liberating! At the moment – as we’re, blessedly, in between seasons – I’m using the newsletter as a sketchbook, a place for a sort of indulgent writing on things that interest me, things I’ve seen or read, that I feel the need to explore in a different context than the one where I usually publish, which is in a daily newspaper. I’ve written this past year, for instance, about hypochondria, Andrew Holleran’s novel Grief, erotic thrillers, the Jean Cocteau exhibition at the Peggy Guggenheim Collection in Venice, and fire. I would love to write a collection of essays, or to use these essay sketches from the newsletter for something like a longer narrative work.

UL:Which novels or authors have been most influential to your writing style and the themes you explore? Do you find yourself returning to specific works during your creative process?

HJ:The authors who have influenced me are on the one hand, like, anglophone writers of ”gorgeous prose” – James Baldwin and Christopher Isherwood, for instance – and on the other hand francophone contemporary writers whose style is at the same time really intense and really restrained, like Abdellah Taïa and Nina Bouraoui. They’re all gay, though, so there’s one thing they have in common! I have a hard time coming up with any Swedish authors that have been influential – earlier this year my American editor asked me who my favourite Swedish writer was, and I really could not think of an answer. I’m realising just now that I actually have a much easier time thinking of Swedish translators that I love and that have been influential to my writing, like Gunnel Vallquist, who translated Marcel Proust and Marguerite Yourcenar, or Anders Bodegård, who translated Flaubert and Hervé Guibert. It appears I have some issues with Swedish writers, and also that I’m obsessed with translators.

UL:Could you share some insights into your creative process? When and how do you find you’re the most productive or inspired to write?

HJ:I start over several times when I write, and I’ve realized that I like to hang out with my material for quite some time – with both Antiquity and Body double, my forthcoming novel, I spent about a year just working on the first few pages. When I start properly writing I’m kind of anal – I give myself homework, like a word count I have to reach by a certain date, and then I rework everything. This is such a cliché, but I actually love writing at night. Partly because it’s the time of day when it’s easiest to work undisturbed, but also because it feels a little antisocial, and I like for writing to be something that’s taking place outside of quotidian life.

UL:What’s next for you as a writer? Are there any new projects or ideas you’re excited to explore?

HJ: Yes – my second novel, Body double, will be published by Norstedts in February 2025. It’s a surrealist thriller, one could say, about two women who meet by accident and gradually start to resemble each other to the point of becoming each other’s doppelgängers. The vibe and aesthetics of the novel are inspired by late 90s and early 2000s European co-production movies – I want the Canal+ logo to flash before the reader’s eyes. For Polish readers a translation of Antiquity will be published by Pauza later that year, I think – I’m not clear on exactly when, however.I’m a regular contributor to Svenska Dagbladet, so if you’d like to read my criticism, that’s where you’ll find it.