I needed a pair of shoes to go with the dress. I came to me that pairs of mother’s good shoes were kept in the coldattic. I found a pair of black ones with low heels that didn’t look too evangelical. While fixing the straps I caught sight of the forgotten painting. 317

I hadn’t given it a thought since I put it away. Now I dragged it to my room shut the door and ripped the brown cardboard cover off. It wasn’t framed. Just stapled onto a bit of softboard. I stared at it for so long I almost became part of it. The scene it showed was as logical as most things in our lives. Or as illogical.

More knocking on the door downstairs. Diana’s hoarse voice reached me through the floorboards. And john’s.

I looked at myself in the small shaving mirror on the wall. My loosened hair was hanging down my back. My lower lip had a painful crack. I squeezed out a little baby cream and smeared it on my mouth and my cheeks which were flaky with cold.

Then I went downstairs. 318

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Original text © Karin Smirnoff and Bokförlaget Polaris 2018 in agreement with Politiken Literary Agency

English translation © Anna Paterson 2021

My Brother was first published as Jag for ner till bror by Bokförlaget Polaris in Sweden, 2018

First published by Pushkin Press in 2021
This edition published 2021

The cost of this translation was defrayed by a subsidy from the Swedish Arts Council, gratefully acknowledged

Detta ãr mitt land (Far awa from the warld) reproduced with the permission of the estate of Helmer Grundström

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ISBN 13: 978–1–78227–569–5
e-ISBN: 978–1–78227–570–1