The Parable Book

"The love that dare not speak its name . . ."

Sweden, 1949. A boy of 15, cutting across a garden, chances upon a woman of 51. What ensues is cataclysmic, life-altering. All the more because it cannot be spoken of. Can it never be spoken of?

Looking back in late old age at an encounter that transformed him suddenly yet utterly, P.O. Enquist, a titan of Swedish letters, has decided to "come out" - but in ways entirely novel and unexpected. He has written the book that smoldered unwritten within him his entire life. The book he had always seen as the one he could not write.

This poignant memoir of love as a religious experience - as a modern form of the Resurrection - is also a deeply felt reflection on the transitoriness of friendship, the fraught nature of family relationships, and the importance of giving voice to what cannot be forgotten. A parable as hauntingly intense as any Bergman film.

Translated from the Swedish by Deborah Bragan-Turner

'To my surprise, I start bawling like a baby - The Metaphor Book is actually so beautiful that it makes you cry' - Sveriges Radio’s Kulturnytt

'One of the most entertaining romans à clef I have ever read' - Kulturnyheterna

'It is very beautiful' - Dagens Nyheter

'A down-to-earth, fairytale-like love . . . It turns into some of Enquist's finest work, a letter from a living person to a dead one' - Svenska Dagbladet