Amanda Svensson interview: ‘The book took six years – and was the most fun I’ve ever had writing’

How does it feel to be longlisted for the International Booker Prize 2023, and what would winning mean to you?  

It’s absolutely insane. To be on the list with these 12 other wonderful writers feels like such an honour, and I don’t think I have really processed it yet. Writing in a small language like Swedish (with only about 10 million speakers/readers), and being translated into a large language like English is a dream, because of the numbers of new readers it allows. The mere thought of winning seems almost forbidden, I haven’t allowed myself to go there, so I’m not sure what it would mean for me personally. But I assume it would make the book reach a lot more readers, which would be fantastic.  

What were the inspirations behind your book, A System So Magnificent It Is Blinding? What made you want to tell this particular story?  

How much time have you got? Writing is a very organic process for me, a winding road, and it’s often very hard, not to say impossible, for me to remember what got me started once I reach the end. Especially with this book, since there is so much going on in it. But I think A System… started with the thought that I wanted to challenge myself to do something I hadn’t done before, which was to write a big, sprawling and intricately plotted book. Partly because these are the kind of books I enjoy reading, and partly because I wanted to see what would happen if I allowed myself a lot of space to let the story and the writing go where it wanted to go. I have a tendency to fall in love with my supporting characters, and in this book I could really let them do their thing. In terms of the novel’s actual themes, the story – for me at least – has always been about fear versus safety, chaos versus order and control. The world is such a huge, fantastic, wonderful, mad, and terrifying place, and I wanted to explore different ways in which people cope with this – through love, family, science, or simply by allowing oneself to go slightly mad.   

How long did it take to write the book, and what does your writing process look like? Do you type or write in longhand? Are there multiple drafts or sudden bursts of activity? Is the plot and structure intricately mapped out in advance?  

It was an on-and-off process of around six years. Some of the first things I remember writing were about the ‘Institute’ where one of the siblings, Sebastian, works, as well as some bits about his lover Laura Kadinsky, who can only see in two dimensions. To be honest, I immediately felt I was on to something great. And then it all developed slowly from there. I always write quite haphazardly at the beginning of a new book, according to some kind of pleasure principle – if it’s not fun I simply move on to something that is. But once I get to a certain point, I am very disciplined and stubborn. I wrote probably about a third of the book (not the best bits, though…) during the last six months, in a sort of mad but organised frenzy. This novel was very different from anything I had written before, in that I couldn’t possibly keep everything I wanted to edit, change or rewrite in my head, so I had long lists and charts and what have you, to make sure all the puzzle pieces came together. It was exhausting, both mentally and physically, but still probably the most fun I’ve ever had writing.