‘I love thinking about the future, about threats and trends we can prevent’

BoelBermann_MG_TheNewChildren_Dystopia
Boel Bermann (1979) is a born storyteller. She used to work as a reporter for several large newspapers and is a member of the Swedish collective, Fear. Besides writing world-famous video games, she has also written her debut novel, The New Children: a fast-paced, gripping and heartbreaking dystopian tale, published by Swedish publisher Kalla Kulor Förlag in 2013. The New Children received rave reviews and appeals to readers of all ages. We are delighted to introduce this all-round debutant. We talked with her about what dystopian novels can teach us and how to make the unbelievable believable.

BNA: You are working in the games industry. What do you exactly do?
I work for the Paradox Development Studio games company and I have the amazing job of being a game writer for a role-playing game based on Norse mythology. I create characters, quests and events and try to challenge the player with the adventures they face and provide them with enough choices to create their own story.
The strangest part is that being a game writer and being an author is completely separate in my mind. I go to work and delve deep into Norse mythology and write fantasy in English about gods, trolls and rune stones. Then I come home and keep writing – but then I write science fiction in Swedish and explore the future. I think I separate the two by writing in different languages and different genres, so one is my work and the other is my creative hobby.

BNA: How does that experience help you with your writing?
It makes me think out of the box. When writing a novel, you choose what your characters do. But in a game, the person playing your game is deciding and you need to be prepared for the gamer to choose anything. I think it helps me to think of all the possible ways in which my stories could go and not just stay attached to one path.

BNA: We are told you love horror and sci-fi. Where does that fascination come from?
From reading the news, actually. Every time I read the news, I feel the urge to change the world and the future. Sometimes it´s really hard to relate to news that is very close to your reality, so I actually think it´s easier to relate to the things we face every day if we place them in a fictional setting in the future. I love thinking about the future, about things that may come and threats and trends we can prevent.

BNA: The New Children is your debut. Could you briefly explain what the novel is about?
In the novel, no children are being born and the world is in shock. After a few years, women begin to get pregnant again, but the new children are not like children used to be. They don’t play games or show emotions, they only watch silently. Against her will, the main character, Rakel, becomes involved when she accidentally kills one of the new children. She is among the first to realize that the new generation is a threat to humanity’s very existence.

BNA: Why did you choose to write this story?
I wanted to make people think about how they would react to the fact that humanity is dying. About what we humans are prepared to do for our own survival. I don´t believe humanity is evil, but I´m convinced that, to preserve what we have, we would go far beyond what we believe ourselves capable of. To protect the persons we love and to avoid seeing things that hurt.

BNA: The book is also about a new generation that develops faster than ‘normal’ people. How did you come up with such a brilliant but terrifying idea?
I wanted humanity to be certain that they are the last generation of their kind. But with the new children growing up, they would still be distant, they would always be younger than us. So I decided that if they developed faster, they would be a more real threat because they might even take over before humanity has died out.

BNA: The main text is interspersed with news articles and interviews. Why did you use this structure?
My main character Rakel is quite introvert and views the world with a distant gaze. So I wanted the novel to give something more than her point of view, due to the fact that she is so focused on her own life. I wanted a larger perspective, but I only wanted one main story – the one Rakel lives through. Therefore, in parallel to the story, I decided to use fictional in-depth interviews from research articles to get short freeze frames of different people’s views of the world.
The newspaper articles were a result of my own frustration with how much I fail to grasp of what is going on in the world. Even though I follow the news every day, I still feel that I only get bits and pieces that rarely come together to create a bigger picture. What I hope is that the articles add to the sense of realism of the story and make it more believable as well as giving a brief overview of how someone would perceive everything that is happening.

BNA: The story is a real page turner. How did you manage to keep up the pace?
I never wanted the reader to feel safe or relaxed. I usually cut the scenes down and left them unfinished, because I wanted the reader to create them in their own minds. Strangely enough, I didn’t think of the novel as a page-turner when I wrote it, probably because I actually knew most of what would happen. But I realized that it’s nearly impossible to put down once you start reading, which of course is marvelous.

BNA: The main character Rakel is an anti-hero who lives a dissolute life: she sleeps with different men, is often hung over and, on top of that, she kills a child. Why did you choose her as the main character?
I wanted the main character to feel like a real person, and I don´t really believe that there are people that are all good. Even good people can do bad things and have destructive personality features. But I have to admit that I also love to write in the first person when the main character is hard to identify with, because then I´m actually forcing you as a reader to see the world from her point of view.
Of course Rakel is a very broken person. I wanted her to evolve so, in the first part of the novel, she is quite passive. She doesn’t care about the end of mankind, she mostly cares about her everyday life. Then, without giving any of the story away, she changes in the latter part – finding something that actually makes her act rather than react. But she did drive me insane sometimes: I’d sit there and curse at the computer. Oh come on, do something and stop looking at the world as if it were pitch black all the time. Rakel and I are very different people, and I doubt we’d be friends if she were real.

BNA: Was it difficult to write about the future?
The future portrayed in The New Children is extremely close in time and occurs in a society that largely resembles our own. I wanted to explore how the human race would react when ordinary people realize that they are probably the last generation of their kind. What is the private, political and social? One reviewer wrote something that meant the world to me: “I think that the dystopian lies as much in the present as in the future as depicted, for the unacceptable is already happening, and the monsters already exist.’’

BNA: We know that dystopian novels are one of your favorite genres. Why is that?
I’ve always loved dystopias because they are in between everyday life and the end of the world as we know it. You still have a society where people try to live their everyday life, but the structure of society is withering away. The strength of dystopias is that they make the reader ask: What would I do? Would I strive to change anything or just look the other way? Since I stay so close to today’s reality, I didn´t have to invent a completely new world, I only had to twist and bend the world we live in and then see what would happen…

BNA: How did the writing process go? Did you face any difficulties?
With a full time job and a social life, the writing did take time. I mostly wrote during vacations, evenings and in meetings of my writing collective, Fear. I didn’t have many problems writing the novel; it came very naturally. My real challenge was in the later part when I had to edit it. I’m critical, so I just kept cutting out pieces I felt were dead meat. That probably helped the novel’s pacing as well – since I removed a lot of the breathing space for the reader.

BNA: Which books or writers inspired you?
It seems that dystopias usually surface when the world is going through a crisis and right now we are in the middle of a wave of dystopias in literature. I personally adore Margaret Atwood’s novels, especially her Maddaddam trilogy, and I feel that her strength lies in how she explores current social trends and pushes them right to the edge of what we can believe.

BNA: The New Children is beautiful but also heartbreaking. Didn’t you find it hard to write such an incredibly sad story?
I needed to believe in my main character Rakel, to believe she was real. Because if I didn’t believe in her, then nobody else would. I felt that if I could make the reader believe in Rakel, they would believe anything I told them in The New Children – even that the children being born were different. I wanted to make the unbelievable believable.

Interview first published at Brandt New Agency.

Represented by Brandt New Agency

Brandt New Agency 2014

Watch the New Children Book Trailer here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ujzDBv5Eaf8

Neil Gaiman – Tidbits of truth surrounded by lies

Neil Gaiman takes one dose fantasy, one dose reality, stirs it carefully while adding a pinch of darkness and a cup of adventure and the result is a delicious blend with the taste that anything is possible.

Tangled hair and curious eyes, the first impression of Neil Gaiman is that he just woke up from bed still thinking about a dream he had. He may be trying to remember whether the dream was about monsters from another dimension or a childhood memory – or both…
The first time I read Neverwhere, I remember the feeling I had much like Alice tumbling down the rabbit-hole. The feeling that there is a reality beyond what we see, that we need to lift our gaze and see the people around us. That we need to stop be so focused on ourselves and try to grasp the world.
– Neverwhere is about the people that fall outside or in between the cracks of a big city. I wanted to write about what happens when you stop existing, when you become invisible. I couldn’t write a book about homeless people, because if I had done that then only the kind of people that are already interested in homeless people would read it. And that would be good, but those people already care about the homeless. I wanted to reach further than that…
Since I read his novel Neverwhere as a teenager, I try to never pass homeless or beggars on the street without looking at them. Even when I don’t give anything, I try to acknowledge their existence, make eye contact, give them a smile or something to show them that they are part of our society. That I know that they are there and I want to help them. I don’t want the cracks to swallow them, I don’t want them to be invisible in my eyes.

Is there always room for storytelling? Neil Gaiman admits having had both doubts and frustration for being a writer, not feeling that he is doing enough nor that his writing was important.
– I have thought a lot about writing and if my writing is doing anything for the world. I mean, my work is to make things up. There are people at hospitals, rape centers, firefighters, refugee camps… And I make shit up.
But a story told by his relative Helena, a survivor from the Holocaust, made him think more about what his writing could do. In the Warsaw ghetto that was Nazi-controlled, books were forbidden. If you had a book, you would be killed. No trial, just a gun to your head, simply for having a book in your possession. And in this environment, Helena was a teacher. Somehow she got a hold of a copy of Gone with the wind. So she hid it in the wall behind a loose brick. At night, she’d cover all the windows and by candlelight read one chapter from the book. Then the next day, she would try and retell the chapter in the book for her students and acting it out in her own way.
– That retelling of Gone with the wind allowed her and her students to escape the ghetto. Novels are not escapism, they are the escape. A good book lets you escape and while you are in the story it will give you knowledge, armor, weapons and strength to go on. That story made me reconsider what I do and recognize the importance of what I do. Because that’s how important stories are to us.

The subjects is serious, but Neil Gaiman still views the world as a magical place filled with possibilities and chances to change the world for the better. I suddenly realize that Neil Gaiman strikes me as a genuinely good person, not only a good writer. A person that never seems to judge people for not having the strength to do good everyday, but always try to make us all do just a little bit better because he believes in all of us. He believes that if we all help out a tiny bit more, the world will be closer to the kind of world we really want to live in.
Neil Gaiman tells us a story. In a country just like ours, people like us were living in peace. They had food on their plates, they had families and houses. They went to work every morning and came back in the evening, tucking in their children in their beds and telling them a good night story. Then carefully closed the door, kissing their loved ones and retelling the events of the day they had andhow their boss doesn’t understand them.
Then a darkness came over the land and ripped it apart. Living became a nightmare. People would vanish without a trace. People were killed and no one knew why. The farmers could not farm, because they might get killed when being in the field working with the crops. There were no longer any stores open, because people had taken all the food in desperation and all the windows had been smashed. The people ran out of water, so they went to the swamp, took the mud and let it settle to be able to drink the little water that surfaced. And they knew this water would make them sick, but without any water they would die. Finally they had lost all hope that the country would ever become whole again.
So they packed what little they could carry, not more than a change of clothes. They took their children’s hands, left their home behind them and even so carefully locking the door, even when knowing they would never return.
And they embarked on a long journey, because they knew in their hearts that they had to flee in order to survive. Both the children and grownups passed dismembered corpses on the ground, people slaughtered in their search for somewhere they might be safe. The parents tried to make the children look away, tried to distract them so they wouldn’t see the dead bodies.
The children and the grownups walked through the desert without knowing if they would make it to the other side and the journey was hell itself. On the way, their shoes fell apart by the rocks that cut through. Still they kept walking barefoot, even when their feet were hurt and torn by the rocks, not knowing if this desert was where they would die or if there was help to be found on the other side. But they did find shelter. Life is still hard there in many ways and they have almost nothing to call their home or their own. But the people survived the journey, they are safe and no longer afraid. They work hard to transform the temporary shelter into a home and make it into a place to live. And they still dream of a better future.

This story does not take place once upon a time. This is not a fairytale in a country far away. This story is happening now, in our world and the people are living in a Syrian refugee camp. It’s a dark and grim story and Neil Gaiman wants us to change this story and give it a happy ending.
– When I went to the refugee camp, it was like getting my heart ripped out. I had thought about my own family and my relatives that survived the holocaust, but now I really grasped what it takes to get people to leave their homes that they have created. How far it has to go before you leave the life you have build for your loves ones.

Neil Gaiman met people that had fled to the Syrian refugee camp and asked them if they would tell him their story. What he found was insight in the fragility of civilization. The lives the refugees had were our lives before it all changed. The people were ordinary people like ourselves. Like you and me, they never thought they one day would have to leave everything in a fragile hope of surviving and not have to live in fear every waking hour.
– Their story are Hansel and Gretel, that is the world this story takes place in. Hansel and Gretel is from a time where people were starving, where they didn’t have enough food and how they tried to handle this. Syria was similar to our world, to our reality, before the war. I asked them what they had done before all this and their stories were our stories. I sold insurances, I had a shop, I sold cars, I worked in a factory. Before the war, they lived lower middle class, middle class and upper middle class lives in their society. They didn’t know how thin the ground they walked on could be, they didn’t know how easy their society could break. Their story is astonishingly forgotten. I thought I was really informed on what goes on in the world, but I wasn’t aware of how bad it was in Syria. Because it has been going on for so long, it’s not news anymore and no one reports from the conflict…

Neil Gaiman looks like a unusually normal person or a normal unusual person. Listening to him, I suddenly get the feeling that we must be friends. I have simply forgotten about it. He feels like a friend to every single person in the room. Our mind is trying to convince us that we are friends and Neil himself makes it so horribly easy to believe it by being relaxed and calm. He is who he his, no more and no less and it is perfectly enough. But when we reach the part where Neil Gaiman told us in the audience which writers were his close friends, I nearly fell out of my chair. Not the, oh I’m a bit surprised and say that I nearly fell out of the chair. Rather my entire body jerked to the level that – I actually fell out of the chair and was saved by my friend grabbing a hold of me.
– I don’t really belong to a movement or a group of writers. I have friends that are writers. Jonathan Carroll, Margaret Atwood, Michael Chabon. We agree on shit. We tell each other: Yes, this is how the world should be. Let’s make it happen.
Why the strong reaction from me when Neil Gaiman says the names of his writers friends? Because they includes my absolute favorite authors in the world besides Neil himself. I adore Margaret Atwood and her dystopian take on the future. I have reread Kavalier and Clay’s close to magical tale that mixes superheros with an opposition against the Nazis over and over again. Land of Laughs is a strange tale unlike any other and have always had a special place in my heart. I simply lost my breath when I realized how strongly I’d wish I could be the fly on the wall, listening to them talking an entire night. What these writers all have in common is that they are magnificent storytellers that always add a pinch of reality and make us readers look at the world in a new light.

When Neil reads a scene from ”The ocean at the end of the lane”, he does different voices for the child’s thoughts, for the child when he speaks and for the dad that is confused and somewhere else in his mind. He reads it so vividly that we all can almost smell the burned toast. We hardly even see the writer himself when he reads. We barely notice the writer dressed in black jacket, black jeans, black t-shirt sitting in the dramatic setting with a large, red curtain up on the stage. Instead we all become children again, thinking of toast, of a glass of milk from a real cow and of how adults so rarely listened to us when we spoke, no matter how much we stressed the urgency.
– I read a lot of children literature as a small child and I realized that quite a few of these writers knew absolutely nothing about children. Putting me in context, I was a kid with a book. Weddings, birthdays, bar mitzvahs, you name it – I was always reading. My father would pat me down for books before we went on social occasions. But somehow I could always find a book, no matter where I went. And then I’d simply go below a table or sit behind a couch and read, wherever I could be alone with the novel. Some of these children’s books would give me the feeling that ”This book is about me, this person knows me.” The I’d read another book and feel that: ”Oh, this is very peculiar. It seems it is written by someone that can’t remember what it’s like being a child. And that really baffled me and made me think: Did grownups get an amnesia pill and forget everything? So I promised myself to never forget what it’s like being a child.

Neil Gaiman’s ability to capture both children’s and adults view of the world and the fact that none of us really grows up, we simply grow taller and start to pretend to fit into society is one of his trademarks. Grownups are not to be trusted, even when they try to do right. He captures the imagination and the analyzing gaze from children seeing through the thin layer of adulthood that the years drape us in, questioning why some people seem to think that it is so horribly important to cut your hair and get a job and how children view the grownups horribly peculiar behavior.
– It’s a terribly thing being a smart child. You see through the grownups and you go ”That’s bullshit.” The first time for me was in school and they had changed the rules regarding comics. So if you brought a comic to school and got caught, they would not just take it, they would tear up the comic in front of you. So I asked my teacher about why they had decided this. And he answered ”Because if you read comics, you wouldn’t read real literature.” And I said: ”But that’s not true. I have the largest comic collection of all the students and I’m the only student that had read the entire school library.”

When I went to the lecture with Neil Gaiman, I was afraid. I had such great expectations that I didn’t truly believe he could fulfill them. I honestly didn’t believe he could leave a greater impression on me than his novels had already done. It was a complete waste of perfectly good fear. I envy the people that has him as a teacher in his writing class. That little fact, that he has a writing class, make him seem so horribly humble. He seems to doubt his own ability to teach, but he wants to give something back. And he claims that he finds out more about himself during teaching. Because when students ask him questions, he needs to answer them. Then he carefully listens to his own answers, to learn more about what he himself really think of the matter.
– Being a teacher, I get to talk ideas, talk about fantastic literature and get people to write fantasy. I get to show how using fantasy can be used to shine light on other things that exist in our world. We live our lives inside our own heads. On some level, we may still believe that volcanoes explode because they are angry with us. And we spend at least half of our lives with dreams and imagination. In my writing, I’ll always use magic as much as I can to illuminate a metaphor. Because if I talk about the subject in absolute terms, you will either turn away or miss the point. All my writing is a mosaic picture with tidbits of truth surrounded by lies.

All of us listening wants to keep our distance, we don’t want to sit there with stars twinkling in our eyes. We want to listen to his writing process and give the impression that we are sensible, intelligent grownups that are by no way starstruck by his appearance. Why are we even trying?
To quote the head of the head of the international writers stage that tried to end the evening in a very correct and professional tone. How he handed over the gift and shook hands with Neil Gaiman, thanking him politely for coming to Stockholm. How I could see the man’s posture suddenly changing. How he was desperately trying to hold back his true reaction. How I could see him surrendering to the moment. Deciding not to resist the urge that each and every person in the entire room feels. How this correct middle-aged man suddenly throws his arms around Neil Gaiman and with a loud voice speaks the words: “My god, I love you.”

Written by Boel Bermann

Make a change – donate here:
http://donate.unhcr.org/neilandgeorgina

Read more:
Neil Gaiman’s webpage

’So many ways to die in Syria now’: Neil Gaiman visits a refugee camp in Jordan

Neil Gaiman shares his perspectives of Syrian refugees in Jordan – in pictures

Neil Gaiman 2

A small selection of Neil Gaiman’s writing:
The Sandman
Neverwhere
American Gods
Fragile Things
Smoke & Mirrors
Stardust
Coraline
The Graveyard Book
The Ocean at the End of the Lane

Den nya människan recension/Bokmoster

”Dataspelsutvecklaren Rakel råkar riktigt illa ut när hon för att försvara en kompis barn dödar ett av barnen från den nya generationen. Samhället ser dem som ofarliga, de är ju bara barn liksom. Men Rakel får på nära håll se vad de är kapabla till … En läsvärd och välskriven science fiction-dystopi, ett område som tangerar min husgudinna Margaret Atwood, med Tjänarinnans berättelse och MaddAddam-trilogin.”

Läs hela recensionen här:
http://bokmoster.blogspot.se/2014/03/310-den-nya-manniskan.html

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Köp romanen Den nya människan här:
http://boelbermann.se/den-nya-manniskan/kop-boken/

 

Signering på SF Bokhandeln idag kl. 14

SF Bokhandeln: Signering i Stockholm: Den nya människan av Boel Bermann
”Klockan 14.00 på lördag kommer Boel Bermann att signera sin debutroman Den nya människan hos oss i stockholmsbutiken. Det är en obehaglig skildring av en nära framtid där mänskligheten, efter att ha varit steril ett kort tag, börjat föda barn igen. Men det är något märkligt med barnen som kommer. De verkar inte riktigt mänskliga… Perfekt julklapp!”

Facebook event:
https://www.facebook.com/events/212206562291755

Kan du inte komma? Beställ Den nya människan här:
http://www.sfbok.se/asp/artikel.asp?VolumeID=127135

 sfbokhandeln signering boel bermann2 den nya människan

julklappstips från sf bokhandeln science fiction den nya människan ny

Klicka här för alla science fiction julklappstipsen!

Den nya människan – Samlade intervjuer

Min dystopiska debutroman ”Den nya människan” släpptes för bara några veckor sedan och jag är överlycklig över att så många tycker om den! Samlade recensioner kan hittas här: http://boelbermann.se/recensioner/

Nedan har jag samlat de intervjuer jag hittills gjort för min bok, allt ifrån peppnings-samtal om att följa drömmen, om dystopier som genre och om hur det är att ge ut min första bok. Hoppas det kan vara både hjälp och inspiration för er därute som skriver!

Overkligt – Podcast avsnitt 54 – Att följa drömmen
Boel Bermann arbetar för svenska spelutvecklarna Paradox Development Studio, och har just förverkligat en av sina drömmar och blivit författare med sin bok Den nya människan. Hon hjälper sedermera Overkligt-trion att komma i kontakt med sina egna drömmar för att jaga efter dem. Det här är Overkligt – med Victor Leijonhufvud, Christer Engström och Johan Hallstan.
Klicka här för att lyssna på Overkligt – Podcast avsnitt 54 – Att följa drömmen på Itunes!
Klicka här för att ladda hem Overkligt – Podcast avsnitt 54 – Att följa drömmen som MP3!
Overkligt hittar du här: http://overkligt.se/

[NÖRD:IGT] EP39 – Den med dystopier & Boel Bermanns roman Den Nya Människan ”Vi tycker att podcastsformatets styrka är att du lyssnar på dina egna villkor, det finns ingen satt tidsram och att den oredigerade, naturliga konversationen kan bli helt magisk med rätt grupp av människor.   Boel Bermann tillhör definitivt typen av personer som passar bra i en podcast. Och vi blev överlyckliga när hon gick med på att förvandla podcasten till en ljudbok genom att läsa högt ur sin debutroman Den nya människan i veckans avsnitt. Det är inget annat än episkt.   Och precis där börjar vi showen: med att prata med Boel om hennes nysläppta bok Den nya människan. Efter det glider vi in i Diskussionen och vurmar i dystopier, Bermann är nämligen lite av en expert på ämnet!”
Klicka här för att ladda ner Nördigt avsnittet som MP3!
Klicka här för Nördigts RSS flöde!
Klicka här för Nördigt via Itunes!
Nördigt hittar du här: http://nordigt.nu/2013/09/12/nordigt-ep39-den-med-dystopier-lost-planet-3-killer-is-dead-rayman-legends-robocop-the-3d-man-och-boel-bermanns-debutroman-den-nya-manniskan/

Författarintervju med Boel Bermann/Bokstävlarna
”I höst debuterar Boel Bermann på Kalla Kulor förlag med dystopin ”Den nya människan”, en bok som jag fick förhandsläsa för några månader sen. En roman som handlar om vad som händer med en värld där alla barn som föds är väldigt, väldigt annorlunda. Precis som alla bra dystopier är det en bok som säger mycket om vår samtid och om hur lite som egentligen krävs innan hela samhället balanserar på ruinens brant. Och det är en bok som jag misstänker att det kommer pratas en hel del om i höst.”
Läs hela intervjun på Bokstävlarna här:
http://bokstavlarna.wordpress.com/2013/08/13/forfattarintervju-med-boel-bermann/

”Jag ser fortfarande absurt mycket film” / Moviezine
”…min kommande dystopiska roman ”Den nya människan”, som ges ut i augusti, hade definitivt inte kommit till om det inte vore för alla makalösa sci-fi rullar jag sett genom åren. Det är en mörk historia om en nära framtid där barnen som föds inte är som barn ska vara. Tystlåtna barn som inte visar känslor och som ger ifrån sig ett surrande ljud. Och nu när jag tänker efter så har nog alla otäcka barn från diverse skräckfilmer satt sina mentala spår, speciellt lågmälda favoriter som ”A Tale of Two Sisters” och ”Barnhemmet”.
Läs hela intervjun på Moviezine här:
http://www.moviezine.se/artikel/13645-jag-ser-fortfarande-absurt-mycket-film

”Kursen tog mig med storm” / Skrivarakademin
”Jag har alltid haft en förkärlek för dystopier i alla dess former. Vad kan hända som rubbar hela vår värld? Hur kommer vi att hantera det? När hela vår värld förändras av bara en faktor. Dystopier gör att jag kan titta på vårt samhälle idag med distans och se saker på ett nytt sätt. Jag tycker om när det finns en vardag som går att känna igen, men där världen går mot något okänt. För den som vill läsa dystopier rekommenderar jag Tjänarinnans Berättelse av Margaret Atwood, Enhet av Ninni Holmqvist och Staden utan kvinnor av Madeleine Hesséreus.”
Läs hela intervjun här:
http://www.folkuniversitetet.se/Skolor/Estetiska-skolor/Skrivarakademin-i-Stockholm/Puffar/Boel-Bermann/

Boel Bermann om Den nya människan, skrivandet och dystopierna
”Jag har inte en favoritdystopi, jag har massor. Jag tycker om hur dystopier gör att jag kan titta på vårt samhälle idag med distans och hur de kan få mig att ifrågasätta saker eller se saker på ett nytt sätt. Jag vill att karaktärerna ska leva i världen, men jag anser inte att de behöver försöka rädda den eller ens vara en viktig karaktär i den världen. Måste jag välja kommer Oryx & Crake av Margaret Atwood, Enhet av Ninni Holmqvist, Staden utan kvinnor av Madeleine Hesséreus och Never let me go av Kazuo Ishiguro enormt högt på min lista. Jag har alltid varit svag för dystopier, men jag är inte alls lika svag för undergångsskildringar efter katastrofer.  Jag vill att det ska finnas ett samhälle i grunden, en vardag som går att känna igen och en värld som fortfarande har struktur och regler.  Men som samtidigt håller på att vittra bort och förtvina.”
Läs hela intervjun här:
http://kallakulor.com/boel-bermann-om-den-nya-manniskan-skrivandet-och-dystopierna/

Tidningen Skriva #5 2013
Under vinjetten ”På väg in” hittas  en intervju med  författardebutanten Boel Bermann och romanen Den nya människan. ”Boel Bermann, 34, Den nya människan (roman, Kalla Kulor Förlag, Augusti) ”I en nära framtid är barnen som föds annourlunda. De är tystlåtna, de visar inga känslor och de leker inte. Min huvudperson Raker är obekväm i närheten av barnen, men håller sig distanserad från det som sker. Tills den dag då hon ser ett vanligt barn attackeras och i sin panik dödar ett av de nya barnen…”
Tidningen Skriva hittar du här:
http://tidningenskriva.se/

Debutantporträtt: Höstens Böcker 2013 / Svensk Bokhandel
”Barn. Varför har jag skrivit en roman om barn? För att barnen är vår framtid. Tas barn bort ur vårt samhälle tas mänsklighetens framtid bort. Att jag har skrivit en dystopi är ofattbart om man inte känner mig. Så därför vill jag bara poängtera att jag är en positiv människa som har skrivit en mörk historia. Nej, jag tror inte att mänskligheten är ond. Nej, jag hatar inte barn. Så, nu har vi det avklarat.”
Läs hela artikeln här:
http://www.svb.se/bokfakta/debutant/boel-bermann

Nerd Is a Universal Language/The Escapist
”Boel Bermann is a Swedish game producer and PR manager for Paradox Development Studio. She lives in Stockholm, more than 4,000 miles from my home in North Carolina. Boel speaks Swedish in her daily life, but is more than fluent in English; she uses all the normal slang of a gamer with ease. In between talking to her about the games she was showing me, we chatted about Firefly, the A Song of Ice and Fire series by George R. R. Martin and its HBO adaptation, and our mutual non-participation in the Doctor Who phenomenon. But it wasn’t until Bermann shared a few details about what her friends called her apartment in Swedish – ”Bolles kök”, which translates to ”Boel’s kitchen” despite sounding obscene in English – that I remembered she was from a culture complete alien to my American sensibilities. Despite our differences, we could happily discuss whether True Blood jumped the shark last season, or what challenges an adaptation of Robert Jordan’s Wheel of Time would present .”
Läs hela krönikan här:
http://www.escapistmagazine.com/articles/view/editorials/10066-Nerd-Is-a-Universal-Language

Läskiga godnattsagor för vuxna/Allehanda Media
”På dagarna jobbar jag med dataspel. På kvällarna försöker jag skriva en scifi-bok där barnen som föds inte är som barn ska vara. Men det är en helt annan historia…”
Läs hela intervjun här:
http://allehanda.se/noje/1.3970698-halla-dar-boel-bermann

Release me: #2 på Kulturhuset 17:e september
Samtidsdystopi med två debutanter: Jessica Johansson (”Thrillerliv”) och Boel Bermann (”Den nya människan”).

Kalla kårar och odöda döda / P3 Spel ”Den spelintresserade Boel Bermann skriver skräcknoveller för podcasten Fruktan. Hon kommer till studion för att berätta hur det är att inte bara uppleva skräcken utan också skapa den.”
http://sverigesradio.se/sida/avsnitt/49543?programid=4090

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Den dystopiska roman Den nya människan” släpptes den 28:e augusti, 2013.
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Om ”Den Nya Människan”

Vad händer när barnen som föds inte är vanliga barn?

”Jag har dödat ett barn. Det är vad de säger till mig här på polisstationen, i förhörsrummet. Inombords skriker jag. – Det var inget barn jag dödade. Det var något helt annat. Kan ni inte se det?”

Året är 2014 och inga barn föds längre. Världen är i chock, lamslagen över vad som sker. Efter några år börjar kvinnorna plötsligt bli gravida igen, men de nya barnen är inte som barn brukade vara. De leker inte, de iakttar i stilla tysthet. Mot sin vilja blir Rakel involverad när hon råkar döda ett barn. Hon är en av de första som inser att den nya människan är ett hot mot mänsklighetens hela existens. Fler och fler nya barn föds och de har en snabbare utvecklingstakt än vanliga människor. Efter en brutal incident på Rakels arbetsplats flyr hon. Flyr från ångest och sviken kärlek, söker tröst i tillfälliga förbindelser och berusning. Då händer det som inte får hända …

Den Nya Människan av Boel Bermann 2D