Kira Josefsson on 'Small Comfort' (Nominated for the International Booker Prize - 2026)

Harshaneeyam (0:23): Welcome to Harshneem Podcast. Today we enter the intricate, wickedly humorous and deeply observant world of Swedish author, Ia Genberg.

Joining us is the acclaimed translator, Kira Josefsson whose English translation of the short story collection Small Comfort has been long listed for the International Booker Prize 2026. Keera is no stranger to Ia Genberg Sharp Prose. She also translated the 2024 International Booker Prize shortlisted novel, The Details. In small comfort, the author shifts her focus towards the subtle, often invisible ways that money, status and debt permeate our most intimate human relationships.From a former child star turned elusive interviewee to a divorced couple finding marriage to secure an inheritance, these stories take us to the inner world of these characters. Stay with us as we discuss the slippery nature of success, the challenge of finding distinct tonalities for interconnected stories. 

Kira (2:09): I love, translating Ia.  her writing is so beautiful that it's, a pleasure to spend time with her texts. I also really love her gaze on the world and on her characters. So working with her again is a is a true pleasure and I feel really lucky that that I have gotten to translate now two books of her and hopefully there will be more.

H (2:37): In small comfort, these are short stories which are interconnected in a way. I think even the details it has written like short stories. There are four different characters and four perspectives and their life and there is interconnectivity because they are all friends. Though it's a novel, you can read it independently all these four. Other than that, what are the similarities in these two?

Kira (3:02): I think other than that sort of formal formal similarity, although I would say that small comfort is more experimental in its form, the four the five different stories are are more different in in style and character. I would say that, one thing that is consistent, is, again, yes, style, as I mentioned, her her sort of she has she really, really drills down into specificity, with both her her scenes and her characters. And there's a particular combination of sharpness and generosity, in the way that she portrays people. And there's sort of a gentle ribbing often, but it always comes through with a lot of generosity. And I think 

H(4:10): Yeah. As a reader, one thing that I find really extraordinary about her writing, she keeps writing about mundane things. You know? She writes a lot about day to day life, but the the way it comes across, it's really beautiful. The way she puts it across is really, really beautiful.

Kira(4:32): I love her writing. Yeah. And I mean, even in in something, there's one story in Small Comfort where she sort of takes on big pharma and there's some sort of abstracted but nevertheless world politics in it. And even there, it's never It is very focused on sort of the everyday as you say. And I think that there is like an interesting scale shift there which is something I like in many of my authors, my favorite authors do that sort of thing where the big becomes small and the small becomes big. And that's something I think she's really, really good at.

H(5:15): Especially the human relationships. She just she just goes ahead and dissects them. Yes. So when compared to the task of translation between these two books, was there any change in your approach when you are dealing with these short stories as compared to the details?

Kira(5:34): I would say that my approach to translation in general is pretty straightforward. I just sit down, I start from the beginning and I work through the novel or the text and then I go back and go over it again and again and again. And so that has not shifted. What has perhaps or what is different is that this time when when I translated the details, I had never read her before actually. She was not on my radar and that was a project that was brought to me by her agent. And so then I was discovering a new writer for the first time and I was just really taken by by that new discovery. Whereas this time, I'm returning to an author whose language I have spent a lot of time with. And so rather than a new acquaintance, it feels like a deepening, of that relationship. As a translator, you're so, you become so intimate with someone's writing, with someone's language, with their little quirks and sort of style stylistic, idiosyncrasies. And so so getting return getting to return to someone in that way is is really interesting. Like, it kinda deepens your your relationship to them. And that's I would say that's the main thing that was different in this case.

H (6:53): It is said that these are all interconnected stories. One way as a reader I looked at it is all these stories, more or less, they talk about money and its relationship with money. Even the role it plays on human relationships, the relationships we have with our fellow human beings.

Kira(7:18): Some of them actually do have repeating characters, but it's very subtle. So there is a taxi driver who in an early story who recurs in a sort of main role in a later story. There is a very wealthy man who's done some evil stuff who who returns. So some of them do. So in that sense, you know, I do think that there are those threads.

Ilya has said that she doesn't think that she she set out to write, five interconnected stories, and she says that she doesn't think that she was successful in doing that. I would, perhaps disagree. I think that the the very subtle links are quite elegant and beautiful. It's like a fun little Easter egg where you discover that someone has returned. But I think that the themes, this this sort of question of how money and status and power mediates, human relationships and and, complicates human relationships.

H (8:25): In all these stories, one common thing is success versus failure, I think.

Kira(8:29): Yeah. Exactly. Exactly. Totally. And which, you know, and I think success is also measured.

You know, I think it's like she's sort of probing the connection between success and money. Are there other kinds of success or is that really the kind of success that matters? And sort of like how the way that money creates kind of a sort of entangles the path to relationships and entangles the relationships that we have with each other and complicates them in ways that are often, I think, unfortunate and makes people less happy. I think that's the way that she explores that in a sort of refracted way through these stories. I think it's really interesting. And I do think it is a successful approach to that theme.

H(9:26): So how do you describe the style of presentation in these stories? How do you describe the style?

Kira (9:30): I think that it has this they all have this, you know, yes sort of signature gentle but still biting humor and and that, very, like, generous and expansive view on humans and human relations. But I would say that to me as a translator stylistically, do feel pretty different. There is one letter, written in sort of a consular tone, sort of government bureaucratic tone. There is there is one sort of research report with with notes that become a journal about a romantic relationship. There is one more sort of straightforward story. There's one interview transcript. So so stylistically, would say that they do

H (10:21): Interview transcript is quite different. The first one. Right?

Kira(10:24): That's the first one. Exactly. And so so finding, you know, I think the details, I just sort of immediately could float into that tone and the style because it is consistent throughout. But here, I did have to find slightly different tonalities for each story though still keeping faithful to, yes, own personal style.

H(10:51): So what do you find the most difficult part in translating these stories?

Kira(10:57): I didn't think that anything was particularly difficult. And I think that has to do with, yes, writing being so thoughtful and so sort of tight. There is not a word out of place and this is how I felt about the details as well. I saw this in another interview about this book as well, but I think when the writing is good, it really guides the translator to where she needs to go. And I think that's very true for this book as well.

H (11:35): We will talk about two stories. We'll introduce two out of these five to our listeners. The first one being the Success Griggur, which is the first story and the last story, Small Comfort, which goes by the same name as the book itself. So would you please introduce these two stories to Our Lady and the Success Gregor and Yes.

Kira (11:57): So Success Gregor is presented as an interview transcript between the journalist, Iain Bai. So that's the same name as the author and man named a man named Grigey Jonsson, who was a child movie star in a movie based on an Astrid Lindgren book. Astrid Lindgren is the author of Pippi Longstocking.

H (12:27): I know it's a real writer, but it's a movie itself that is there.

Kira (12:31): I actually don't know if this particular one has been produced or not. I'm not overly familiar with all of the movies produced by her books, but it sort of circulates around her the universe of books that she has written and many of them have been filmatized, probably all of them. So he so this character was a a star in one of those movies. He since has had a hard time finding his footing in in the world. He grew up with a single working class dad and has a a sort of big chip on his shoulder and a lot of theories about why the world works the way it is it does, why he has not found the kind of success that he had hoped for.

Ia is there to to Ilya Genbry, the journalist, is there to interview him about his about his role in this in this movie for a, for a book in the honor of of this author. And she's interviewed all the other actors, and and characters, for this. And he's the last one, but he's very, reluctant to actually be interviewed and and is very slippery and keeps sort of insinuating things about about her and her character based on what he can observe. And they talk a lot about success, what that could look like, and and sort of human relationships, in a way that's really slippery and kind of exasperating, and and funny.

H (14:13): And dialogue is very smartly written.

Kira (14:15): Yeah. It's really it's really it's really slippery, I think is the is the is the best word for it. And I had a lot of fun, translating that one. It was a lot of fun to try and find the he has he has sort of this particular kind of Stockholm way of talking, Gregor, and and finding, something that worked for that in English was really fun. So that's Success Gregor.

And the last story, Small Comfort, the title story follows a man who, who is, going to visit his ex wife on an island, where they have a summer house. And he and his wife have to pretend to be married, to be still married even though they've divorced long since so that her mother believes that they're still married and thus won't take away the inheritance that they expect once she passes away. And this is a very sizable inheritance. And so they really don't want to lose it. She really believes in the sanctity of marriage.

 And so they have to put on this little play, they call it, a little charade and try to find a way of of, you know, cohabiting for for a night or two, which which sounds like it could be sort of plump humor. But again, it's very subtle and quite sweet and sad also. And I think it has that exact sort of like generosity, gentleness, humor as well.

H (16:05): I think the wife character, Cecil, right? Her name is In fact, when I was reading it, I have that particular character. I have one of my cousins who has exact similar characteristics.

Kira(16:24): She's a very powerful person. She's sort of she has a lot of there's a lot of momentum. That's fantastic. I hope Your cousin reads it.

H(16:36): No. I will I'll get her the book. Once it it is set to get released in India. Once it gets released, I will get her the book, surely. And she goes into such fine detail, my god, when she writes about the characters.

Kira  (16:53): Yeah. They they they're very even the sort of smaller characters really get a very full treatment by just like small comments. You really understand who they are.