Part of Series
Before Heart's Delight, I was a boy, he thinks. Before Heart's Delight, I was a child When he first saw Ann-Katrin on the bus, he was mesmerized, captivated, consumed. But that was before. Now he sits alone in his room, a sixteen-year-old boy, waiting for her to call. Wishing for her to tell him it was real. It was as perfect as he imagined. But the phone sits silently. The boy continues to wait, systematically destroying all of the objects from their short-lived relationship. He rips up the bus pass from their first meeting. The phone is quiet. He throws the pot of lemon balm she gave him over the edge of the balcony. No phone call. He tosses the black Frisbee and the Swiss Army knife over too. Still the phone stays silent. As he plays their relationship over in his mind like a movie, he wonders: What if his heart's delight doesn't call? Will life be worth living then?
Author
Per Håkan Stefan Nilsson (living in Sölvesborg, Sweden since 1981) worked as a music teacher before becoming a full time author in 1999, but his debut was in 1986 with Mellan vakna och somna. He has written over 30 novels, novellas, and children's books, and his works have been translated to over 20 languages. He also wrote the film script for A Different Way which was based on his novel Ett annat sätt att vara ung; furthermore, a Swedish TV series was based on his most known work Heart's Delight. Between 1997 and 2010 he was a member of the Swedish Academy for Children's Books. He is still writing to this day. On Rabén & Sjögren's page for Per Nilsson, he writes this about himself:"I think I became a writer because I am a dad. I started writing to my own kids to tell them about myself as a young boy, and told them, amongst other things, about a 11 or 12 year old who wandered around in Malmö, head filled with daydreams and fantasies, crashing into the hard reality in the form of street lights again and again. That was me. I put the scenes from my memories together to a story and sent it to a competition, wich became my first book." Awards: 1992 - Rabén & Sjögren's contest "Best Love Story" 1997 - Deutscher Jugendliteraturpreis 1997 - Nils Holgersson Plaque 1998 - ABF's Literature 1999 - Astrid Lindgren Prize 1999 - The Dutch Silver Kiss Award 2003 - Expressen's Heffaklump 2006 - August Prize (also nominated in 1994, 1998, 2000 and 2002) 2006 - Los Angeles Times Book Prize 2017 - En bok för alla's Reading-promotion Prize
