Karin Altenberg Edinburgh International Book Festival 2011

Copyright Pauline Keightley
Karin Altenberg gave a talk at the Edinburgh International Book Festival 2011.  She is originally from Sweden and moved to Britain to study in 1996. She holds a PhD in Archaeology from the University of Reading. Her thesis, which was published in 2001, won the Nordenstedska Foundation Award. She is currently senior advisor to the Swedish National Heritage Board and is a Fellow of the Linnean Society of London. Her 'powerfully imagined debut' novel (Independent), Island of Wings, is a rich and vivid account of the harsh realities of life on a remote Scottish Island in the 1830s.