Background
Svedberg was born in 1934 in Halmstad, and moved to Malmö with her family in 1941.
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Annakarin Svedberg
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Svedberg"s first novel, Vårvinterdagbok (translated as Late Winter Diary or Journal of Early Spring), was published in 1957. The book was well received, and one critic wrote: "The promise in Annakarin Svedberg"s book above all lies in the linguistic purity of her wit, which sparkles like the late winter sun through her window, in the grace of her phrases, in the exquisite taste she demonstrates in every passage." She published her second novel, (Yea, this soul!) in. In 1962, Svedberg published Vingklippta (Wing-clipped), her third novel and her first piece of writing about lesbianism.
The book, which presents a positive depiction of a lesbian relationship, was considered a Beat novel and drew comparisons to Jack Kerouac, Jackson Pollock, Henry Miller and Selma Lagerlöf.
She followed Vingklippta with three more novels about lesbians: Det goda livet (. The Good Life), Se uppför trollen! eller: Äntligen en bok om livet sådant det verkligen är (.
Watch out for the Trolls! or: Finally a Book on Life as lieutenant Is), and Din egen (1966. Your Own). Svedberg depicted homosexuality as no different from heterosexuality, although her lesbian characters often faced prejudice and injustice.
In the 1960s Svedberg also authored a famous short story, a pornographic parody of Little Red Riding Hood.
She published Kärlek är det innersta av hjärtat (Love is the Core of the Heart), a book in the form of a diary, in 1976. Two years later, she wrote En enda jord, an academic book about religious values held by different cultures. She self-published the book Sex Kristalliska Berättelser in 1994, and since the late 1990s has written numerous books about travel and spirituality.
Politics
Her work gradually became more political and focused on feminist ideas, and she was a contributor to the radical feminist magazine Kvinnobulletinen. In 1985 she helped to found Kvinnopartiet (The Women"s Party), a short-lived radical feminist political party in Sweden.
Views
Literary critic Jenny Björklund wrote in Lesbianism in Swedish Literature: An Ambiguous Affair that Svedberg"s writings "contribute to opening up discursive space for a more tolerant attitude to lesbianism".
