Powerfully inventive and atmospheric, Strega is a modern gothic story of nine young women on the cusp of inherit-ing society’s submission to violence, and the age-long myths that uphold it. With little boxes of liquorice, hairbands, and notebooks in her bag, Rafa arrives at the remote Alpine town of Strega to work at the grand Olympic Hotel. There, she and eight other girls receive the stiff uniforms of seasonal workers and are taught to iron, cook, and make the beds by austere matrons. In spare moments between tasks, the girls start to enjoy each other’s company as they pick herbs in the garden, read in the library, and take in the scenery. But when the hotel suddenly fills with people for a raucous party, one of the girls disappears. What follows are deeper revelations about the myths young women are told, what they are raised to expect from the world, the violence they are made to endure, and, ultimately, the question of whether a gentler, more beautiful life is possible. A monument to long-dead maids and their shrouded knowledge, Johanne Lykke Holm’s luminescent and jagged prose, delivered in Saskia Vogel’s incisive translation, resonates like a spell that keeps exerting its powers long after reading.
Praise for Strega
'Strega is the kind of book Lolita would write if she wrote like Thomas Mann. This book is sprawling with heart-shaped mirrors in wet grass, peach-coloured bedding, neon lights, knives. All the paraphernalia of patriarchal violence. Johanne Lykke Holm is from the school of Fleur Jaeggy and Frank Wedekind, she uses the young women as her stage and transports you to another world, where everything is scenography. As uncompromising and brilliant as she is disturbing, I am forever devoted to the cult of her'– Olga Ravn
JOHANNE LYKKE HOLM is an author and translator. Shortlisted for both the Nordic Council Literary Prize and the European Union Prize for Literature, she is establishing herself among the most promising up-and-coming literary authors in Sweden. She has also translated Yahya Hassan, Josefine Klougart, and Hiromi Itō into Swedish.
SASKIA VOGEL is an author and translator from Los Angeles, now living in Berlin. Permission (2019), her debut novel, was published in five languages and longlisted for the Believer Book Award. The Swedish edition was translated by Johanne Lykke Holm. In 2021 Vogel received the Berlin Senate Grant for Non-German-language Literature and was a PEN America Translation Award Finalist. She is Princeton University's Fall 2022 Translator in Residence.