麻豆约拍

A chance meeting at a party, a call in the early morning, and a day trip to the dry Spanish Interior - one sightseer is profoundly moved by her experience on the day.

Originally commissioned for a short story festival in Croatia, Swedish writer Lina Wolff's tale takes us from Madrid to Granada and back again, highlighting the different cultural views of northern and southern Europe and their attitudes to superstition, and leaving our narrator shaken and profoundly moved by her experience.

Lina Wolff has lived and worked in Italy and Spain. During her years in Valencia and Madrid she began to write her short story collection Many People Die Like You (2009). Bret Easton Ellis and the Other Dogs, her first novel, was awarded the prestigious Vi Magazine Literature Prize and shortlisted for the 2013 Swedish Radio Award for Best Novel of the Year. She now lives in southern Sweden.

The translator, Saskia Vogel, is from Los Angeles and lives in Berlin where she works as a writer and Swedish-to-English literary translator. She has written on the themes of gender, power, and sexuality for publications such as Granta, The White Review, The Offing and The Quietus. Her translations include work by leading female authors such as Katrine Marcal, Karolina Ramqvist and the modernist eroticist Rut Hillarp.

This story is part of Radio 4's Reading Europe project and continues an exploration of contemporary writing from Scandinavia.

Written by Lina Wolff
Translated by Saskia Vogel
Read by Olivia Darnley

Produced by Lizzie Davies
A Waters Company production for 麻豆约拍 Radio 4.