Anna-Lena Laurén
Anna-Lena Laurén (b. 1976) is well-known in Scandinavia as a columnist and reporter with a personal touch and great commitment in her writing. That was one of the reasons why she won the Finland-Swedish journalist award, the Topelius Prize, in 2002. Laurén was awarded the State Journalist Award in 2010 for news reporting.
Written by Anna-Lena Laurén
Since I Came to Moscow
Anna-Lena Laurén is known as a committed Russia correspondent but she is also known for the personal, entertaining way in which she writes.
In her new book she describes her life in Moscow, not only as a foreign correspondent but also as a single young woman with a good job and many friends, and yet experiencing loneliness, an emptiness that cannot be filled. Frankly and bravely, she tells about her single existence, the people she meets, the social life of a pulsating metropolis, and her relationship with her parents and relatives back home in Finland, which she loves. She tells about dates and male friends, whom she describes with humour and warmth.
Written by Anna-Lena Laurén
In the Mountains There Are No Masters
Steep mountains, a high sky and an multiplicity of different ethnic groups – that is the Caucasus.
Anna-Lena Laurén is one of the few western journalists who regularly travel about the region and who has thoroughly familiarised herself with the conflicts that smoulder in South Ossetia, Abkhazia, Ingushetia, North Ossetia, Chechnya, Dagestan and Kabardino-Balkaria. In this book she travels from North Caucasus, which belongs to Russia, to Georgia. The book is written with journalistic expertise, insight and love, which are Laurén’s trademark.
Written by Anna-Lena Laurén
They’re Not All There, Those Russians
Rights sold: Russian, Norwegian, Swedish, Ukrainian
This is a book of snapshots of modern Russia. It is written with humour and warmth, anger and passion, joy and wonder – feelings which one cannot live without in Russia.
“Late into June motorists drive about Moscow with the black and orange victory ribbons tied to their radio aerials. When I see a dusty Lada going past with the ribbon flying from the aerial, so dirty you can’t recognise it, I think two things.
1. Of course it is fine that one can be so proud of one’s country, that the Russians know their history and gain strength from it.
2. There goes somebody who can’t afford anything but a Zhiguli, as he lives in a country that only rewards the strongest. Nevertheless, he glorifies the system. Poor devil.”
Elina Ahlbäck Literary Agency Oy Ltd.
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