Foto: Ulla Montan
Annika Thor was born in Gothenburg in 1950. She has worked as a librarian, as a free lance journalist and as a script writer for film and television. Her first book, En ö i havet (A Faraway Island) was published in 1996 and followed by three sequels. She has published 15 books for children and teenagers, and three books for adults. Her most recent novel for adults, Om inte nu så när? (If not now, when?), appeared in 2011.
In her books, Annika Thor deals with themes like exile, loneliness and the feeling of being an outsider, but also with love and friendship. She has received many prizes and awards for her writing, among others the Swedish August Prize for the best book for young readers in 1997, and Deutscher Jugendliteraturpreis for En ö i havet in 1999.
Annika Thor’s books have been translated into 17 languages, including English, French, German, Italian and Russian. A Faraway Island was published by Random House in 2009, its sequel, The Lily Pond, in 2011, and the third book about the Jewish refugee girls Stephie and Nellie, Deep Sea, in January 2015.
View my recommendations of books for children about war and refugees
Open Sea Now Available in English!
The fourth and final part of the series about Stephie and Nellie has been translated into English by Linda Schenck (who also translated the previous volumes). It is now available as a Kindle e-book from Amazon. In this book, we follow the two girls through the immediate post-war period, where new decisions about their future lives have to be made.
Annika Thor 