"Five Swedish novellas"

• "Most Beloved Sister" by Astrid Lindgren. A 7 year-old has a secret twin who she sometimes visits. When she gets a real dog, the fantasy sister and dog go.
• "Mirabelle" by Astrid Lindgreen. The narrator plants a seed which grows into the doll she’s always wanted. It talks, though only to her.
• "Frictions" by August Strindberg. A baron meets a like-minded woman at a party who asks him to marry her on the spit. They have a child. They’re modern – they don’t believe in love. He has political success. She used to have that too, but loses interest. She leaves him when he old-fashionedly says he loves her. He remarries. He writes a pamphlet criticising the upper classes who control the moral expectations of society and of divorce in particular.
• "Sleet" by Stig Dagerman. A fatherless 9 year-old is cutting carrots on a farm. He sees his rather older sister have sex with Alvers (uncle?). Mum’s aunt is arriving from the States after 20 years. Grandfather, against his will, is bathed and smartened up. He cold-shoulders his sister when she arrives, She’s upset. The narrator consoles her.
• "The Silver Mine" by Selma Lagerlof. Lagerhof was the first woman to get a Nobel Prize for literature. The king’s coach breaks down by a village of graceful people. He asks for monetary support in war. The citizens say that he’d better speak to the parson. He mistakes the parson for a peasant. The parson lets the mistake continue when asked what the parson’s like. He tells a story about how, when silver was found in the nearly mountain, it turned so many good men into bad ones that the parson convinced people that the discovery should be kept secret. The king’s so impressed that he lets things be.