The author stitches together disparate stories in the lives of the two women to make for a huge tapestry that comes together in one emotional story arc. Over the course of the narrative, Linda excellently tells a story of personal loss and grief in the life of the two women. Published by Penguin the bestselling title follows the story of a young women that moves to a new country and makes friends with one of the most unlikely of people – an elderly woman.

Linda Olsson’s debut “Let Me Sing You Gentle Songs” is a critically acclaimed novel that brought Olsson’s name into the limelight. Professionally, Olsson has toured and attended festivals across New Zealand and extensively In Southern Europe, the Nordic countries, and Eastern Europe. The first product of that collaboration was the 2015 published “Something is Rotten”, the first of “The Matakana Trilogy”. Linda has worked with Thomas Sainsbury and written some of her novels under the pen name Adam Sarafis. Her other novels have also been highly successfull and gone on to be published across the world. In 2005, she published her first award winning novel “Let Me Sing You Gentle Songs”, which went on to become an international success becoming published in more than 25 countries and winning several awards in its native Sweden. Linda Olsson got her first big break as a writer when she was the winner of the Short Story Competition by the Sunday Star Times. She now spends her time between her Swedish homeland and Auckland her new home. She went back to school and attended Victoria University to complete her bachelor’s degree before proceeding to the University of Wellington where she got her degree in German and English literature. But that was just the first of her wanderings, as she spent the following few years in several countries before settling down in New Zealand in 1990.

She soon got married and had three children from her marriage before she left Sweden in 1986 to go take up a job in Nairobi Kenya. Born to working class parents, Olsson went to the University of Stockholm from where she graduated with a law degree, after which she went on to work in finance and banking. With more than five international bestsellers to her name she garnered international critical acclaim and much commercial success. Linda was born in Stockholm in 1948 and has lived in a variety of countries including Japan, Britain, Singapore, and Kenya before she settled in New Zealand. Olsson herself writes in Swedish and English. She first got into writing with the publishing of the international bestseller “Let Me Sing You Gentle Songs”, that was so popular that it was translated into over a dozen languages.

Linda Olsson is a Swedish author who currently resides in Auckland, New Zealand from where she writes her contemporary fiction.

Astrid and veronika by linda olsson