{{Short description|Swedish writer, translator and publisher}}

{{Infobox person | name = Eva Ingrid Elisabet Alexanderson | image = Eva Alexanderson SPA.jpg| | alt = <!-- descriptive text for use by speech synthesis (text-to-speech) software --> | caption = | birth_name = <!-- only use if different from name --> | birth_date = {{Birth date|1911|01|09|df=y}} | birth_place = Vasastan, Stockholm | death_date = {{Death date and age|1994|12|20|1911|01|09|df=y}} | death_place = | other_names = | occupation = writer, translator and publisher | years_active = | known_for = | notable_works = }}

'''Eva Ingrid Elisabet Alexanderson''' (9 January 1911 – 20 December 1994) was a Swedish writer, translator and publisher. Her best known works are her 1969 lesbian novel ''Kontradans'' and her 1983 translation of Umberto Eco's ''The Name of the Rose''.

==Biography== Alexanderson was born in 1911 in Vasastan, Stockholm. She graduated from upper secondary school in 1930 and received a Bachelor of Arts from Lund University in 1935.<ref name=nwl>{{cite web|url=http://nordicwomensliterature.net/writer/alexanderson-eva-ingrid-elisabet|work=The History of Nordic Women's Literature|title=Alexanderson, Eva Ingrid Elisabet|first=Maria|last=Schottenius|year=2012|accessdate=12 April 2016}}</ref><ref name=over>{{cite web|url=http://www.oversattarlexikon.se/artiklar/Eva_Alexanderson|title=Eva Alexanderson, 1911–1994|work=Svenskt översättarlexikon|first=Annika Ruth|last=Persson|accessdate=12 April 2016|language=Swedish}}</ref> She then joined the lexicography department of the publishing house Svenska Bokförlag, where she worked for three years. In this period she travelled for long periods to France, Italy and Spain, and translated ''Invertebrate Spain'' by José Ortega y Gasset in 1937.<ref name=over/> At the beginning of World War II she became a writer for the anti-Nazi newspaper ''Nu''. In 1944, she married Gustaf Ragnvald Lundström, and they divorced in 1946.<ref name=nwl/>

After the war, Alexanderson worked as a senior publisher for the publishing house Bonniers from 1946 to 1955.<ref name=nwl/> In the 1940s, she translated and published a variety of works by Jean-Paul Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir and Jean Genet; other writers whose works she translated include Albert Camus, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Fyodor Dostoyevsky, François-René de Chateaubriand, Alain Robbe-Grillet and Dario Fo.<ref name=over/> Her debut novel, ''Resa till smältpunkten'', was published in 1954 and was set in a poverty-stricken developing country. In 1967, she published ''Pilgrimsfärd'', a religious travelogue.<ref name=nwl/> She won the 1969 {{Interlanguage link multi|Elsa Thulins översättarpris|sv}} for translation.<ref name=over/>

Alongside Annakarin Svedberg, Alexanderson was one of the most famous writers of lesbian fiction in Sweden in the 1960s.<ref name=bjorklund>{{cite book|last=Björklund|first=Jenny|title=Lesbianism in Swedish Literature: An Ambiguous Affair|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=rc9CBAAAQBAJ&pg=PT71|year=2014|publisher=Palgrave Macmillan|isbn=978-1-137-36496-8|pages=71–73}}</ref> Her 1964 novel ''Fyrtio dagar y öknen'' (''Forty Days in the Desert'') features lesbianism as a minor theme; it is mentioned that the main character, a woman who travels to Norway to recover from a disease and converts to Catholicism, has had previous erotic relationships with women. However, lesbianism became the central theme in Alexanderson's novel ''Kontradans'' (1969, ''Contra Dance''), which depicts two women who fall in love at a commune. The story may have been autobiographical as the main character, like Alexanderson, is a writer named Eva who writes a novel about lesbians.<ref name=bjorklund/> ''Kontradans'' caused controversy upon its release and Alexanderson did not publish another novel for more than two decades.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://nordicwomensliterature.net/article/mercy-world|title=At the Mercy of the World|first1=Maria |last1=Schottenius |first2=Birgitta |last2=Holm|work=The History of Nordic Women's Literature|year=2012|accessdate=12 April 2016}}</ref>

Alexanderson's 1983 translation of Umberto Eco's ''The Name of the Rose'' was well received by critics and readers and won the {{Interlanguage link multi|Letterstedtska priset|sv}} in 1985. In the same year, she won the Samfundet De Nio's translation prize.<ref name=over/> Alexanderson's final novel, ''Sparkplats för jungfrun – ett socialmänskligt collage'', was published in 1992 before her death in 1994.<ref name=nwl/>

==References== {{reflist|30em}} == Further reading == * {{SKBL}}

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{{DEFAULTSORT:Alexanderson, Eva}} Category:1911 births Category:1994 deaths Category:Swedish publishers (people) Category:20th-century Swedish novelists Category:Swedish women short story writers Category:Lund University alumni Category:20th-century Swedish women novelists Category:20th-century Swedish short story writers Category:20th-century Swedish translators Category:Novelists from Stockholm