The Echo of Summer

About the Sámi’s world – from the new, strong voice from Scandinavia
Novel from Swedish
By Elin Anna Labba
Translated by Hanna Granz

464 pages. Hardcover. 14 x 21 cm.

Against a panorama of overwhelming nature – three relentless women of a Sámi family fight for their homeland

Every spring, after the winter, they return to their "summer land" on the lake in northwestern Sweden. But this spring, everything is different: When thirteen-year-old Iŋgá reaches the valley with the reindeer, her mother, and aunt, her village has sunk. Birch trees, huts, the family's belongings, and above all, her father's grave – everything is underwater, ruthlessly sacrificed for hydropower production and the profits of the southern cities. A decades-long struggle against the country's powerful begins, one that tests not only the three women, but the entire Sámi village to its breaking point.
Elin Anna Labba tells the largely unknown story of her community and creates an unforgettable testimony to the right to self-determination and the deep connection between people and nature.
A highly topical novel of tremendous narrative power.

Elin Anna Labba , born in 1980 in Kiruna, northern Sweden, is a Swedish-Sámi journalist and author. She studied journalism at the University of Gothenburg before writing her first book on the forced resettlement of the Sámi in 2020 to better understand her own family history.
In the non-fiction category, she won the most important Swedish book prize, the August Prize, as well as the prestigious Norrlands Literature Prize in 2021. 'The Echo of Summer' is her first novel.
Elin Anna Labba currently works for the Sámi writers’ center Tjállegoahte and lives in Jokkmokk.
Hanna Granz , born in 1977, studied Scandinavian studies and literature in Bonn. Since 2012, she has worked as a freelance translator and has translated novels by Johanne Lykke Holm, Tove Alsterdal, Alex Schulman, Tone Schunnesson, and Patrik Svensson into German.

Here you can find more novels and more about Sweden .