The Quarry

Author’s note

There are many quarries along the coast of Öland where the trolls (or trullen, as my great-uncle Axel Gerlofsson called them) used to get the blame once upon a time if something broke or was stolen. On the alvar there are also elf stones from the Bronze Age where people still place coins or other gifts for the elves. Courses on how to meet elemental beings such as elves have been run in Sweden, but not, as far as I know, on Öland or Gotland, and the places where the quarry and the elf stone are located in The Quarry are freely invented by me, as are all the characters and companies in the novel.

Two excellent non-fiction books which influenced the writing of this novel were Flickan och skulden (Guilt and the Girl) by Katarina Wennstam, which deals among other things with sexual morals and double standards, and Porr — en bästsäljande historia (Porn — a Bestselling History) by Mattias Andersson, which is a detailed analysis of the Swedish sex industry.

Johan Theorin