Mats Malm

Mats Ulrik Malm, (born 10 May 1964), is a Swedish literary writer and translator. On 18 October 2018, Malm was elected a member of the Swedish Academy, on 26 April 2019 he was elected the new Permanent Secretary and Speaker of the Swedish Academy.[1]

Mats Malm at the Gothenburg Book Fair, 2016

Mats Malm is a university professor of literary science at the University of Gothenburg. He has a PhD in Gothicism. As translator, he has published Icelandic Sagas. He is working on digitizing Swedish literature as director of the Swedish Literature Bank. Since 2012, Malm has been a member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Letters, History and Antiquities. On 18 October 2018, Malm was elected member of the Swedish Academy, where he succeeded Klas Östergren in Chair No. 11.[2]

A man impersonating Malm rang the novelist John Banville on the day that the Swedish Academy intended to announce the recipients of the 2019 and 2018 Nobel Prizes in Literature.[3] The man purporting to be Malm told Banville he had won and even read out the customary citation and asked if he would prefer to be designated the 2018 or 2019 laureate.[4][5] Banville was attending a physiotherapy appointment at the time and was lying face down on a couch when the call came.[5] He informed his daughter; she called her father back while watching the live announcement at midday to tell him his name had not been mentioned.[4] After the announcement, a voicemail to Banville (again from the man posing as Malm) claimed the Swedish Academy had withdrawn his prize due a disagreement.[3] Banville felt sorry for the man purporting to be Malm: "He certainly sounded upset, he was a very good actor".[4] But he later compared the voice of the speaker to that of the real Malm, at which point he realised that neither man sounded alike.[5][4] However, despite this, when Banville rang the number back he found himself in contact with the offices of the Swedish Academy.[3]

Works

• Voluptuous Language and Poetic Ambivalence. The Example of Swedish Baroque, Peter Lang Verlag, Frankfurt am Main etc. 2011, ISBN 978-3-631-59299-1.
• Minervas äpple: om diktsyn, tolkning och bildspråk inom nordisk göticism (1996)[6]
• Textens auktoritet: de första svenska romanernas villkor (2001)[7]
• Det liderliga språket: poetisk ambivalens i svensk "barock" (2004)[8]
• Poesins röster: avlyssningar av äldre litteratur (2011)[9]
• The Soul of Poetry Redefined: Vacillations of Mimesis from Aristotle to Romanticism (Copenhagen: Museum Tusculanum Press, 2012)[10]

Translations

• Gautreks saga (Samspråk, 1990)[11]
• Gísla saga (Gísla saga Súrssonar) (Fabel, 1993)[12]
• Carl Jonas Love Almqvist: Om François Rabelais' liv och skrifter (De vita et scriptis Francisci Rabelæsi) (Litteraturvetenskapliga institutionen, Gothenburg University, 1993)[13]
• Snorri Sturluson: Snorres Edda (Prose Edda) (co-translated with Karl G. Johansson) (Fabel, 1997)[14]
• Gunnlaugs saga ormstungu (Gunnlaugs saga Ormstungu) (Saga forlag Reykjavik, 2014)[15]
• Hrafnkels saga (Hrafnkels saga Freygoða) (Saga förlag Reykjavik, 2014)[15]

Awards

• Schückska Award of Swedish Academy 2010

References

1. "The Swedish Academy appoints a new Permanent Secretary". 26 April 2019. Retrieved 27 April 2019.
2. Ny ledamot i Svenska Akademien, Swedish Academy, October 19, 2018.
3. Hilliard, Mark (11 October 2019). "John Banville says he was phoned by Swedish Academy number shortly before announcement". The Irish Times. Retrieved 11 October 2019.
4. Hilliard, Mark (12 October 2019). "John Banville believes 'man with a grudge' behind Nobel prize hoax - Writer is sanguine about the incident, saying: 'for 40 minutes I was a Nobel Prize winner'". The Irish Times. Retrieved 12 October 2019.
5. Walawalkar, Aaron (12 October 2019). "'Don't buy the champagne': Booker prize winner targeted by phone hoax". The Observer. Retrieved 12 October 2019. The Irish writer had been lying face down on his couch, mid-physiotherapy session, when he received a call from a man purporting to be Mats Malm, the permanent secretary of the Swedish Academy, half an hour before the true winners would be revealed at a ceremony in Stockholm on Thursday. 'He asked me if I would prefer the 2018 or 2019 prize and read me the citation he would print about my work', Banville recalled.
6. Minervas äpple: om diktsyn, tolkning och bildspråk inom nordisk göticism. ISBN 91-7139-290-4. SELIBR 7607584.
7. Textens auktoritet: de första svenska romanernas villkor. ISBN 91-7139-508-3. SELIBR 8370690.
8. Det liderliga språket: poetisk ambivalens i svensk "barock". ISBN 9171396667. SELIBR 9511890.
9. Poesins röster: avlyssningar av äldre litteratur. ISBN 9789171398796. SELIBR 12755940.
10. The Soul of Poetry Redefined: Vacillations of Mimesis from Aristotle to Romanticism. ISBN 9788763537421. SELIBR 12639314.
11. Götriks saga: en fornaldarsaga. ISBN 91-86020-94-3. SELIBR 7754251.
12. Gisle Surssons saga. ISBN 91-7842-146-2. SELIBR 7668206.
13. Om François Rabelais' liv och skrifter. ISBN 91-86270-36-2. SELIBR 7756434.
14. Snorres Edda. ISBN 91-7842-217-5. SELIBR 7668243.
15. Islänningasagorna: samtliga släktsagor och fyrtionio tåtar. ISBN 978-9935-9199-2-2. SELIBR 16543014.

External links

• Chair no. 11 - Mats Malm. Literary historian, Elected: 2018., biographical notes on Mats Malm at Svenska Akademien website
• Staff profile as professor, Universität Göteborg
• List of computer science publications by Mats Malm, dblp.org