Identity & Belonging

Explorations of self, belonging, and what it means to find your place.

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My Year As a Fraud

My Year As a Fraud

Johanna Swanberg

In the remote Swedish village of Bäcken, Cassi has become something of a local celebrity. As the founder of a successful self-help retreat, she offers everything from couples’ therapy to puppy yoga and full-moon rituals. Her clients trust her advice, pay generously for her services, and admire her apparent wisdom. There is just one problem: Cassi is a fraud. Behind her carefully constructed public image is a woman struggling with unemployment, depression, and alcoholism, concealing her own troubles while helping others navigate theirs. But maintaining a life built on deception becomes increasingly difficult as Cassi forms genuine connections with the people around her. When the truth threatens to emerge, she must confront the distance between the person she pretends to be and the person she really is. Blending sharp humour with tenderness and emotional depth, this novel explores loneliness, self-deception, and the universal desire to belong. It asks whether someone who has spent years hiding behind a carefully crafted identity can find the courage to be honest—and discover that acceptance is possible even without pretending to have all the answers.

The Details

A high fever sends an unnamed woman drifting through memories of the people who have shaped her life. When she opens an old book and discovers a message from Johanna, her former lover, the past begins to unfold through four intimate portraits of love, friendship, loss, and secrets. There is Johanna, now a famous television presenter; Niki, a friend who vanished without a trace; Alejandro, a passionate lover whose dreams collide with reality; and Birgitte, a troubled woman whose hidden pain remains difficult to understand. Each person returns with all the contradictions that made them unforgettable—and all the questions the narrator never managed to answer. In The Details, Ia Genberg explores how other people become part of our identity, leaving traces long after they have disappeared from our lives. Intimate, perceptive, and quietly moving, this slim novel asks a profound question: Do we ever truly know another person, or do we simply carry our own version of them? Winner of Sweden’s August Prize in 2022, the novel was shortlisted for the 2024 International Booker Prize.

Everything Is Not Enough

Everything Is Not Enough

Lolá Ákínmádé Åkerström

Everything Is Not Enough follows three Black women navigating ambition, relationships, and belonging in contemporary Stockholm. Kemi Adeyemi, a Nigerian-born marketing executive, has built a successful career but struggles with the emotional costs of her choices. Brittany-Rae Johnson, an American socialite, finds that wealth and privilege cannot protect her from personal turmoil. Meanwhile, Yasmiin Abdullahi, a Somali-Swedish entrepreneur, faces the challenges of balancing her cultural heritage with her professional ambitions and personal desires. As their lives intersect, the women confront the pressures of social expectations, the complexities of interracial relationships, and the inequalities that shape their experiences. Each must question what success means and whether the lives they have worked so hard to build truly fulfil them. Through interconnected stories of love, friendship, ambition, and self-discovery, Åkerström explores race, class, migration, and the search for belonging. The novel examines the tension between outward success and inner fulfilment, asking whether achieving everything society values is enough to create a meaningful life.

Ædnan: An Epic

Ædnan: An Epic

Linnea Axelsson

Spanning a century of Sámi history, Ædnan tells the story of two Indigenous families whose lives are transformed by colonialism, forced assimilation, and the struggle to preserve their cultural identity. In the early twentieth century, new national borders disrupt traditional reindeer-herding routes, tearing families away from the land and ways of life that have sustained them for generations. Decades later, their descendants confront the consequences of discrimination and cultural erasure, searching for ways to reclaim their language, heritage, and belonging. Written in haunting, lyrical verse, Axelsson’s epic weaves together intimate family memories and the broader history of a people whose existence has been threatened but never extinguished. The title, Ædnan, means land or earth in Northern Sámi, reflecting the profound connection between territory, ancestry, and identity. This is a powerful story of dispossession, resistance, and the enduring bond between a people and their homeland.

About this theme

Books: 4
Countries: 72

Countries with this theme

Bosnia and Herzegovina

Congo, Democratic Republic

Dominican Republic

North Macedonia