In English

Ordfront Introduced

The story of Ordfront began some 35 years ago in an old smokehouse on the south side of Stockholm and continued on an old farm in Småland, in the south of Sweden. There, the first members of Ordfront devoted themselves to rediscovering the art of printing books, whilst raising sheep and growing potatoes. For many years Ordfront was a marginal enterprise in the Swedish media world, even though the company’s move back to Stockholm meant a geographical relocation back to the centre.

But during the 1990s extraordinary things happened. After ten years of fighting bitter ideological trends and growing financial worries, Ordfront suddenly picked up a tailwind, thanks to the success of Henning Mankell’s crime novels. New members joined the association and things changed in a way no one could have imagined.

Today Ordfront publishes Sweden’s largest cultural magazine: Ordfront magasin. Modern comic strips for grown-ups are published in the magazine Galago, and the magazine Lyrikvännen publishes poetry.

First and foremost, Ordfront is a movement: an association with about 17,000 members, committed to the issues of democracy and human rights. Through this association, the businesses are united: the publishing company with a yearly total of about 40 new books, the magazines, and our own book club. This makes Ordfront unique. In an increasingly monopolized media market, Ordfront is a radical and viable alternative, which raises its voice regarding many urgent topics in Sweden and abroad.

For international rights to our books, please contact Eva Stenberg, at eva@ordfront.se

Ordfront Publishing House 

Owned by an association with some 17,000 members, Ordfront Publishing House is a unique venture in the Swedish book business – and one of the most successful publishers during the 1990s. To a large extent this was due to the crime novels by Henning Mankell.

Ordfront Publishing House is today a middle-sized general publisher, with a list encompassing various genres. It is mainly a non-fiction publishing house, specializing in political issues and contemporary topics in Sweden and abroad. History is also an important subject on the lists. In recent years, several Swedish fiction writers published by Ordfront have achieved substantial success.

Fiction

Ordfront has published six thrillers by Swedish Crime Academy Award winner Kjell Eriksson, in a series about detective inspector Ann Lindell (now also published in the USA), as well as other crime authors such as Håkan Östlundh, Sara Paretsky, Qiu Xiaolong, and Laura Wilson.

Authors of foreign fiction published by Ordfront include Ian McEwan, Lionel Shriver, Sherman Alexie, Dag Solstad and Judith Hermann, and also non-European authors, such as Yvonne Vera, Uzma Aslam Khan and Mia Couto.

Ordfront’s list of Swedish fiction includes younger authors such as Marjaneh Bakhtiari with Kalla det vad fan du vill (2005), John Ajvide Lindqvist with Låt den rätte komma in and Hanteringen av odöda, Per Östling with Vi faller and David Ericsson with several books on working class life.

Politics, Cultural History, International Affairs

Contemporary politics, globalization issues, the consequences of US foreign politics for the Third world and the fight for freedom, independence and human rights all over the world will always be an important part of Ordfront’s publishing. This was what got us started way back in the late sixties.

Ordfront publishes several prominent international authors writing about these topics, among them Michael Moore, Arundhati Roy, Vandana Shiva, Tariq Ali, Eduardo Galeano, Anna Politkovskaja, Naomi Klein, Linda Melvern, Edward W. Said, Susan Faludi, John Pilger, Gitta Sereny, Mark Kurlansky, Noam Chomsky, Seymour Hersh, Mark Lynas and Eric Schlosser. Over the years we have published several books dealing with the conflict in the Middle East, the latest being Susan Nathan’s Another side of Israel.

During 2006, some of the books on Ordfront’s list deal with issues such as the Swedish school system, migration and refugees in Sweden, the critical situation for the world’s oil supplies, modern families in the age of divorces, as well as the political extreme left and the extreme right in Sweden.

History and Cultural History

Our most acclaimed Swedish writer in this field is history professor Dick Harrison, who has written a thorough work on the Black Death, Stora döden, and a book on the Nordic crusades, Gud vill det (Dieu le veut). Ordfront has also published Adam Hochschild’s Bury the Chains and King Leopold’s Ghost as well as two books by Alberto Manguel. The journalist Gellert Tamas wrote The Laser Man, a bestseller and a longseller (the paperback edition was published in 2002 and is still on the Swedish bestseller charts) . It is a shocking documentary on recent Swedish history, the story of a man who in the early nineties shot several immigrants in Stockholm.

Interesting titles in 2006 include Sweden’s foremost gender historian Yvonne Hirdman’s major biography on Alva Myrdal, Det tänkande hjärtat (A Reflecting Heart). Jesper Huor writes of how his Cambodian father vanished in 1977, in Sista resan till Phnom Penh (Last Trip to Phnom Penh).

Graphic Design, Handbooks in Journalism and Creative Writing

Ordfront has a long-standing tradition of  publishing books by Swedish writers on journalistic writing and newspaper design as well as books on creative writing.

For questions regarding our books, please contact Eva Stenberg, eva@ordfront.se.