Engman and Hancock shortlisted for Petrona Award for Best Scandinavian Crime Novel of the Year

Authors Pascal Engman, Anne Mette Hancock and Håkan Nesser have been shortlisted for the 2023 Petrona Award for Best Scandinavian Crime Novel of the Year, alongside Petra Rautiainen, Joachim B Schmidt, Lilja Sigurðardóttir and Gunnar Staalesen.

The Petrona Award is open to crime fiction in translation, either written by a Scandinavian author or set in Scandinavia, and published in the UK in the previous calendar year. The winning title will be announced on 5th October 2023.

On the shortlist, Sweden is represented by two books – Engman’s Femicide, translated by Michael Gallagher (Legend Press) and Nesser’s The Axe Woman, translated by Sarah Death (Mantle), while Denmark is represented in Hancock’s The Corpse Flower, translated by Tara F Chace (Swift Press).

Iceland is represented in Sigurðardóttir’s Red as Blood, translated by Quentin Bates (Orenda Books) and Norway in Staalesen’s Bitter Flowers, translated by Don Bartlett (Orenda Books). Switzerland is represented in Schmidt’s Kalmann, translated by Jamie Lee Searle (Bitter Lemon Press) and Finland in Rautiainen’s Land of Snow and Ashes, translated by David Hackston (Pushkin Press).

This year there were 43 entries for the 2023 Petrona Award from six countries. There were 21 women, 19 men, two woman/man pairs and one pair of men authors. The novels were translated by 22 translators and submitted by 22 publishers/imprints.

This year, the judges are Jackie Farrant, creator of Raven Crime Reads and a bookseller; Miriam Owen, founder of the Nordic Noir blog; Ewa Sherman, translator and writer, and blogger at Nordic Lighthouse and award administrator, Karen Meek – owner of the Euro Crime blog and website.

The judges said they selected the shortlist from “a particularly strong pool of candidates”, with the shortlisted titles ranging from police procedural and private investigator to historical.”

They said: “As ever, we are extremely grateful to the seven translators whose expertise and skill have allowed readers to access these outstanding examples of Scandinavian crime fiction, and to the publishers who continue to champion and support translated fiction.”