Christmas, 1983. In the aftermath of yet another furious argument, seven-year-old Andrev’s mother lets him in on a secret: his father is, in fact, not his father. And so begins a new kind of childhood, in which fathers come and go, arriving in red Volvos and sweeping his mother off her feet. Fathers can be magicians or murderers, artists or thieves, and, like growing pains, or the weather, they appear uninvited and leave without warning. Fathers are drawn to his mother like moths to a flame – but even she can’t control how they behave.
Vivid and joyful, raw and tender, Bloody Awful in Different Ways is a novel about growing up in the chaos of social change; about how love begins and ends; and above all, about men. Because after all, you learn an awful lot about this strange species when you have seven fathers in seven years.
Translator bio
Ian Giles is an Edinburgh-based translator working from Swedish, Norwegian, and Danish into English. He has more than 35 published translations to his name, ranging from bestselling fiction to complex academic and cultural texts. Recent publications include high-profile translations of authors such as Camilla Läckberg and David Lagercrantz, as well as the international bestseller Bloody Awful in Different Ways by Andrev Walden. Ian is the current Chair of the Translators Association and a former Chair of the Swedish-English Literary Translators’ Association.
Notes on translating the work: https://gilestranslation.com/category/baidw/
Author bio
Andrev Walden is an acclaimed Swedish journalist and columnist. In 2017, he was nominated for the Swedish Grand Prize for Journalism, praised for his ability to ‘find the every-day drama in the big questions’, and to make us ‘laugh and see the world, the family and ourselves in a new and slightly wiser light’. He lives in Stockholm. Bloody Awful in Different Ways is his first novel.
Video greeting from the author: https://youtu.be/E_UzIDJhcCg?si=NlHmqMozT3J2-BAd
Press quotes:
But the coup of the book is its take on coming of age… It tells you things about growing up that you didn’t realise were true, not until Walden put them into words. […] Bloody awful? Bloody brilliant, more like.
George Cochrane, Daily Telegraph, 26/07/25 (archived version here: https://archive.md/x4Vt4)
The writing remains so sharp, so beguiling, so acutely observed that by this point I was willing to follow Andrev/Andrev pretty much anywhere.
Rebecca Wait, The Guardian, 04/08/25 (online here: https://www.theguardian.com/books/2025/aug/04/bloody-awful-in-different-ways-by-andrev-walden-review-darkly-funny-swedish-autofiction)
Links to buy:
Print: https://uk.bookshop.org/a/2434/9780241720288 or order from any bookshop with ISBN 9780241720288
Audio: https://linkto.xigxag.co.uk/links/5V22
Translators Aloud is a YouTube channel devoted to sharing the work of literary translators, for both published and unpublished works.![Description: Queer love poems from the Roaring Twenties (Loucos Anos Vinte). “A minha Amante” (pp. 112–13), “My Lover” (pp. 43–44). “Duma carta” (122–23), “From a Letter” (pp. 53–54). Author: Judith Teixeira (1880–1959) was perhaps the only bisexual woman poet to participate openly in Lisbon’s modernist literary scene. Her civil status—born to a single mother in the provincial city of Viseu, divorced at age thirty-three by her first husband, re-married the following year to the grandson of a viscount—had already made her the subject of scandal. But still more scandalous was the sexually transgressive writing she published under her own name only a few years before the rise of the Salazar dictatorship. Translator: Samantha Pious is a translator, poet, editor, and researcher. In addition to Judith Teixeira, she has translated selections from the poetry of Renée Vivien, which are available as A Crown of Violets (Headmistress Press, 2015, revised 2017), and from Natalie Clifford Barney, which are forthcoming. Order a copy of Judith Teixeira, Cactus Flowers: Selected Poems, trans. Samantha Pious (Headmistress Press, 2025): https://a.co/d/7kBr8dS https://headmistress-press.square.site/product/cactus-flowers-selected-poems-judith-teixeira-translated-by-samantha-pious/104?cs=true&cst=custom Praise for Cactus Flowers: “Samantha Pious’s translations from the Portuguese of Judith Teixeira’s poetry in Cactus Flowers resounds with sensual energy and burning tenderness. Reading these poems, one is struck not only with the passion of Teixeira’s queer love poems but by the way in which turbulent politics and social tensions are subtly traceable within the lines. […] The lone reader is thrown into the bodily world, reminding us that words first and foremost are of the body and its unique experiences.” —Allison Grimaldi Donahue “Judith Teixeira’s poetry has almost always, over the decades, discomfited specialists […] This English edition—with a selection and preface by Samantha Pious, wherein I would underline the sensitivity and care of her fine translations, as well as her personal commitment—allows Anglophone readers to connect with the first Portuguese woman writer to sing of lesbian love, transforming women’s bodies into objects of worship and of carnal consummation.” —Fabio Mario da Silva Find translator Samantha Pious online: https://samanthapious.com/ @samantha.pious Judith Teixeira died in 1959, widowed and without issue; the rights holder(s) is/are unknown. If you have information regarding her estate, please contact the publisher at headmistresspress@gmail.com.](https://translatorsaloud.com/wp-content/plugins/youtube-feed-pro/img/placeholder.png)