Eva Lindström has been awarded the 2022 Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award (ALMA). Lindström writes stories that shift between the everyday and the existential, combining shrewd humour with absurd mystery.
The jury said:
Eva Lindström’s enigmatic picture world is constantly transforming. Trees move abroad, dogs take on giant proportions and objects vanish, suddenly to reappear. With rapid brush strokes and dense colouration, Eva Lindström creates an ambiguous dialogue of text and image. The boundary between children, adults and animals is fluid. With great gravity and wild humour, they wrestle with the eternal questions: Who are we? Where are we going? Who took our hats?
Gecko Press has published two of her picture book, My Dog Mouse and Everyone Walks Away. “The people who discover Eva Lindström’s work become lifelong supporters — her way of looking at the world is original, human, emotional and absurd,” says Gecko Press publisher and translator Julia Marshall.
Among Swedish picture book artists, Eva Lindström has an altogether special profile. In both words and images, she portrays moods and emotions relating to both big life questions and everyday events. Her unusual narrative worlds, through which odd, lost, characters wander, possess enormous originality. Shrewd humour exists side by side with absurd mystery. Her stories can be interpreted in multiple ways and often have open endings that encourage reflection or raise questions. Her point of departure is the world as children experience it, and she captures the exciting dramas of children’s lives. The lines separating children from adults, and even people from animals, are often vanishingly thin.
Eva Lindström was born in 1952 in Västerås, Sweden, and now resides in Stockholm. She was educated at Västerås Konstskola (the Västerås School of Art) and at Konstfack (the University of Arts, Crafts, and Design) in Stockholm. In the 1980s she began working as a cartoonist and published several comic albums. Her first solo picture book was Kattmössan (The Cat’s Hat, 1988). She has since produced numerous children’s books which have received many awards. She is the creator of three animated short films, and several of her books have received film adaptations, including En fågeldag (A Bird Day, 2000), Min vän Lage (My Friend Lage, 2001) and Jag rymmer! (I’m Running Away, 2006).
My Dog Mouse and Everone Walks Away are available in all good bookstores and on our website.
