It's Saturday night in June, 1941, in the city of Malmö, Sweden, and Hitler is just about to invade Russia. A seven-year-old boy sits silently, watching the drunken antics of his Nazi-loving father, his mother, and their pathetic friends. His name is Sven, and that night he tries to kill someone for the first time. He doesn't succeed-not this time. Many decades later, Sven is a friendless and insignificant bureaucrat, an embodiment of respectable, well-ordered, rather dull postwar Swedish society. Every detail of his life is under his rigid control, until the day when some new people move into the apartment next door. Right to the last page, with its distinctive character, vivid dialogue and affecting mix of humour and poignancy, this novel refuses to deliver what is expected.  

Britt Holmstršm was born in Malmš, Sweden, where she lived until 1970. A trip to London became a one-year life experience, which provided material for her first book, Peppermint-Gin. The film rights to Peppermint-Gin were sold the same year, providing Britt with adequate funds to live in Spain. There, in Harry's Bar, she met a Canadian, soon thereafter married him, and moved to Canada. She remained in her adopted country, but left the husband and acquired a new one.

She has completed several degrees: an M.Sc. in microbiology and a visual arts diploma in fashion design.

In 1982, she moved to Regina, Saskatchewan. She lives there, with her husband and two children. Her first English language novel, The Man Next Door, published in 1998, won the City of Regina Book Award.

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