Stefan Hammarén

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Finnish author Stefan Hammarén (1966-) who writes in Swedish, belonging to the Swedish-speaking minority of the country, is the leading Scandinavian surrealist author, language anarchist, poet and text technician. He cannot be placed in any literary tradition, but his novels have recurring aspects of puns and wordplay, dadaistic eagerness and literary puzzles, and contain erotic digressions. His texts are extremely verbose with few visible threads, let alone plot or characterization, and have a distinct embellishment in a baroque pattern, partly with a Shakespearean solemnity. They resemble Joyce's verbal virtuosities in "Finnegan's Wake". Hammarén's "Sopptrilogi" ("Soup Can Trilogy", 2001--2005) deals with the saucepan-land colonization, in which ingredients and constituents are plentiful. The trilogy's first novel was published in 2001 and called "Med en burk soppa", it was continued by "Konservöppnare bok" in 2003 and finally "På burklös mark" in 2005, all published by small-scale publisher "h:ström - Text & Kultur" of Umeå, Sweden. Hammarén has also written poems, dramas, short stories and a translation and free interpretation of Guy de Maupassants "Horla", amongst others. His translation being unfaithful to the French original, it aroused the ire of noted Swede Carl Rudbeck in daily Dagens Nyheter, but an opposing view soon appeared in daily Svenska Dagbladet.