Agneta Birgitte Ara writes in English, studied literature, and had a daughter in 1981. The memories of her childhood that made a lasting impression were her mother’s dressing room at the theatre and the family’s summer cottage, which is described in her first novel Antonio Gades kommer inte, 1990. Agneta Ara made her debut as a poet in 1975 with the poetry collection Det är redan en annan dag, and her other collections include Hästens hjärta, 1979, Omfamningen, 1982, and Glömska, eld, 1986.
In 1995, she published the novel Huset med de glömda dörrarna, in which one of the two parallel stories is about a little girl who has lost her mother and has stopped speaking. In her novels, Ara renews the narrative technique of psychological realism. Her prose is characterized by the precision and metaphorical intensity of the poet, and her motifs are often deliberately mundane, while the occurrences can have a magical or mysterious dimension.
Additions by the editorial team 2011:
The above biography was first published in 1998. Since then, Agneta Ara has written the novel Det har varit kallt i Madrid, 2007.
