Sami Said

Sami Said is an Eritrean-born Swedish novelist whose critically acclaimed Swedish-language novels draw on his own experience as an Eritrean immigrant to Europe. ¹ The English article names no religion for him, so his data record leaves his faith as unknown. ¹

He was born in Keren, Eritrea, in 1979. ¹ As a child his family fled the war in their country, passing through Sudan and then Germany before settling in Gothenburg, Sweden, by the time he was 10. ¹ After high school he studied at Linköping University, where he founded a literary magazine with fellow writer Oskar Hallbert, and began working on manuscripts in earnest; his early submissions were all rejected. ¹

After the publisher Natur & Kultur took interest in his work, his first two books appeared in quick succession: his acclaimed debut novel Väldigt sällan fin (2012), about a university student at his own alma mater, won the Katapult Prize, the Swedish Writers' Union prize for debut authors, the following year, and was followed in 2013 by Monomani, his autobiographical account of writing the first novel. ¹ His third novel, Människan är den vackraste staden (2018), was shortlisted for the August Prize and was one of Sweden's nominees for the 2019 Nordic Council Literature Prize. ¹ He also published the children's book Äta gräs (2019), illustrated by Sven Nordqvist, and his most recent novel, Satansviskningar ("Whispers of Satan", 2023), was nominated for the August Prize. ¹ He describes himself as an outsider within his own immigrant community, and lives in Hägersten, Stockholm, with his wife, the literary critic Martina Lowden. ¹

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