A large wolf escapes its captors. A cult leader breaks out of psychiatric care. A disillusioned woman is forced to end her self-imposed exile.
Stefan Spjut's latest novel explores the ancient notion that our forests may be inhabited by beings we do not understand, creatures neither animal nor human, living in the shadows . . .
Thriller, horror fiction, suspense, Trolls is set ten years on from hit novel Stallo, as Susso Myrén's world once again starts to shift around her.
In the late 1970s, a young boy disappears from a summer cabin in the Swedish woods. His mother claims that he was abducted by a giant. The boy is never found. Twenty-five years later, an old woman claims that a creature has been standing outside her house, observing her and her five year old grandson for hours. When Susso - a blogger who's dedicated her life to the search for creatures whose existences have not been proved - hears of this, and sees a possible link between the two incidents, she takes to the road on a terrifying adventure into the unknown.
"Very scary. Never mind Scandi crime fiction, the time has come for Scandi horror." METRO
"Ratchets up the tension to an almost unbearable level ... Astonishing." IDEPENDENT ON SUNDAY
Summer 1978. A young boy disappears without a trace from a summer cabin. His mother claims he was carried away by a giant. He is never found.
Twenty-five years later, another child goes missing. This time there’s a lead: a single photograph taken by Susso Myrén. Myrén has devoted her life to the search for trolls, legendary giants known as stallo, who can control human thoughts and assume animal form. Convinced that trolls are real, she follows the trail of missing children to northern Sweden. But humans, some part stallo themselves, have been watching over the creatures for generations, and this hidden society of protectors won’t hesitate to close its deadly ranks.
Mixing folklore and history, suspense and the supernatural, The Shapeshifters is an extraordinary journey into a frozen land where myth bleeds into reality.
“A fantastic novel in every sense of the word…not only because Spjut has accomplished the masterstroke of writing convincingly about the existence of trolls and other mythical creatures in the Nordic forests but also because all this unfolds in a language that captures the everyday reality we know so well, with such precision and exquisite style that the words seem to sparkle on the page.”—Karl Ove Knausgård, author of the My Struggle series
