A few years ago, I was sipping an over-priced cocktail at a sky bar with one of my oldest, closest friends and my boyfriend -- two of my absolute favourite humans. This was during the biggest book fair in Sweden, and I was about to publish my novel, something I had dreamt about since I was little. My boyfriend and I had only dated for about six months, so we were still very much in the butterflies and unicorns-state of infatuation. Annoyingly kissing all the time. Hanging ove

I grew up in Sweden, one of few European countries where the government controls the sale of alcoholic beverages tightly. The opening hours of liquor stores are restricted and you have to be twenty (and armed with an ID if you look under fifty) to buy. When I was a teenager, we used to seek out the town drunks, living their tattered lives on park benches in the city centre, and offer them a bottle of cheap wine if they bought a few bottles of the same shit for us. Easy, but h

I have always had an ambivalent relationship to so called romantic love. One one hand, I am madly in love with love. I have been a sucker for the insanity of infatuation, from time to time losing myself in the highs and lows of falling in love. The butterflies in the belly can tickle softly but they can also shred the stomach lining. Falling in love can be the best and the worst feeling rolled up in one. Then, when I emerge from the whirlwind of infatuation, and regain some