Jungstedt, Mari

Mari Jungstedt is a Swedish journalist, broadcaster and author born in Stockholm. Her parents were very young when they started a family, and Mari is the youngest of her siblings. The family moved from a small flat in the southern suburb of Bandhagen to a terraced house in Upplands-Bro north of Stockholm. Her father was a computer engineer and her mother a housewife. That was the way things were supposed to be in a traditional suburb. Everything seemed fine on the outside, but Jungstedt’s parents fought a lot and her father began to drink. She was nine when they divorced, and as a result her mother, who felt constrained by her children, fell ill and needed comforting. Children’s vulnerability and the influence of childhood on our lives are recurring themes in Jungstedt’s novels. Mari Jungstedt was married for twenty-one years, living in Stockholm and on the island of Gotland. After her divorce from her husband she moved to Arguineguín in the Canary Islands. She now lives between the Canaries and Stockholm.