Recommended by Mr B’s of Bath, another brilliant independent bookshop, I thought I would try this. Besides the cover looked so attractive, and once in my hands I discovered that it was illustrated too. This book is not for everyone. It is more of a lyrical poem than a story. It starts with a little puppy who gets lost in the bleak forests of Northern Sweden, has to learn to fend for himself, and then gradually, reluctantly, becomes befriended by a hunter who eventually bonds with him and takes him as his dog.

But rather than a plot, the book is concerned with the landscape, the creatures that inhabit it, their relationship, and what it might be like to be one of them. We feel the cold, the hunger, the loneliness, the oppressive atmosphere when Spring arrives and then turns to Summer. We are, like the dog, concerned not with things that are happening, but with fear, how to interpret the landscape so that one can eat and not be eaten, thirst, flies, the weather, the seasons.

By one of Sweden’s most prominent fiction writers, this is a short book that can be read and enjoyed  in one session.