Aris Fioretos
»I feel a strong and sinewy liberation in writing about people from other circumstances, whose experiences I have not had, perhaps cannot have. The satisifaction I get from learning what is foreign to me is that much deeper. Literature about myself? No, thank you. I want out of my skin.«
— From an interview in Dagens Nyheter 2019
*
Aris Fioretos is a Swedish writer. Born in 1960 in Göteborg to Greek and Austrian parents, he grew up in Lund and studied in Stockholm, Paris and at Yale University. In 1991 he published his first book, a volume of lyrical prose entitled Delandets bok (The Book of Imparting), which has been followed by a series of novels, essays, and scholarly studies. His works have been translated into over a dozen languages.
Between work on his own texts, Fioretos translates those of others — for example, the late poems of Friedrich Hölderlin, English-language novels by Vladimir Nabokov, and aphorisms by Walter Serner. He regurlarly writes for the culture section of Sweden’s largest daily, Dagens Nyheter, and has received numerous prizes and awards, most recently the Swedish Academy’s Essay Prize and the Order of Merit from the Federal Republic of Germany. Since 2010 he is a member of the German Academy for Language and Literature in Darmstadt, where he served as vice president for nine years; since 2022 he is also a member of the Academy of Arts in Berlin.
His latest book in English is the richly illustrated biography Nelly Sachs, Flight and Metamorphosis, which appeared in 2012. His most recent novel in Swedish, De tunna gudarna (The Thin Gods), was published in 2022; in January 2024 the booklength essay Nabokovs ryggrad (Nabokov’s Spine) followed. In June of the same year he held the poetics lectures in Frankfurt am Main under the title Solarplexus, which will be out in Swedish and German editions in the spring of 2025.
Fioretos lives and works in Stockholm and Greece.
* *
This website presents all book publications, as well as a small selection of texts and interviews. The Swedish and German pages contain some material not included in the English one. If an image is clicked once, the name of the photographer will appear. Some images may be downloaded and are free to use as long as due credit is given. For the others: please contact the rights owner by clicking the personʼs name.
* * *