PETRONA AWARD SHORTLIST 2025: Best Scandinavian Crime Novel of the Year

Seven crime novels from Finland, Iceland, Norway and Sweden have been shortlisted for the 2025 Petrona Award for the Best Scandinavian Crime Novel of the Year. 

Samuel Bjørk - Dead Island, tr. Charlotte Barslund (Norway, Bantam)
Pascal Engman - The Widows, tr. Neil Smith (Sweden, Legend Press)
Malin Persson Giolito - Deliver Me, tr. Rachel Willson-Broyles (Sweden, 
Simon & Schuster)
Óskar Guðmundsson - The Dancer, tr. Quentin Bates (Iceland, Corylus Books)
Satu Rämö - The Clues in the Fjord, tr. Kristian London (Finland, Zaffre)
Gunnar Staalesen - Pursued by Death, tr. Don Bartlett (Norway, Orenda Books)

The winning title will be announced on October 16, 2025.

The Petrona Award is open to crime fiction in translation, either written by a Scandinavian author or set in Scandinavia, and published in the UK in the previous calendar year.

There were 31 entries for the 2025 Petrona Award from six countries (Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, Sweden and Switzerland). This year’s shortlist sees Norway represented with three novels, Sweden with two and Finland and Iceland with one novel each. 

Further information can be found on the Petrona Award website: http://www.petronaaward.co.uk.

PETRONA AWARD SHORTLIST 2022

Six exceptional crime novels from Finland, Iceland, Norway and Sweden have been shortlisted for the 2022 Petrona Award for the Best Scandinavian Crime Novel of the Year. 

PETRONA AWARD SHORTLIST

Maria Adolfsson - FATAL ISLES tr. Agnes Broomé (Sweden, Zaffre)

Helene Flood - THE THERAPIST tr. Alison McCullough (Norway, MacLehose Press)

Ruth Lillegraven - EVERYTHING IS MINE tr. Diane Oatley (Norway, AmazonCrossing)

Anders Roslund - KNOCK KNOCK tr. Elizabeth Clark Wessel (Sweden, Harvill Secker)

Lilja Sigurðardóttir - COLD AS HELL tr. Quentin Bates (Iceland, Orenda Books)

Antti Tuomainen - THE RABBIT FACTOR tr. David Hackston (Finland, Orenda Books)

The winning title will be announced on Thursday 8 December 2022. The winning author and the translator of the winning title will both receive a cash prize.

The Petrona Award is open to crime fiction in translation, either written by a Scandinavian author or set in Scandinavia, and published in the UK in the previous calendar year.

The judges’ comments on the shortlist:

There were 31 entries for the 2022 Petrona Award from five countries (Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, Sweden). The novels were translated by 23 translators and submitted by 14 publishers/imprints. There were 16 female, 14 male and one male/male pair of authors.

 

This year’s Petrona Award shortlist sees Norway represented with two novels; Sweden with two and Finland and Iceland with one each. The judges selected the shortlist from a particularly strong pool of candidates with the shortlisted titles ranging from police procedural and domestic noir to the darkly comic. 

 

As ever, we are extremely grateful to the six translators whose expertise and skill have allowed readers to access these outstanding examples of Scandinavian crime fiction, and to the publishers who continue to champion and support translated fiction. The significantly increasing number of female writers being translated is also to be commended. 

 

THE PETRONA AWARD SHORTLIST 2019

The 2019 Petrona Award Shortlist for Best Translated Scandinavian Crime Novel of the Year
The winning novel will be announced at CrimeFest in Bristol.

THE PETRONA AWARD SHORTLIST

The Ice Swimmer, by Kjell Ola Dahl, translated by Don Bartlett (Orenda Books; Norway)
The Whisperer, by Karin Fossum, translated by Kari Dickson (Harvill Secker; Norway)
The Katharina Code, by Jørn Lier Horst, translated by Anne Bruce (Michael Joseph; Norway)
The Darkness, by Ragnar Jónasson, translated by Victoria Cribb (Penguin Random House; Iceland)
Resin, by Ane Riel, translated by Charlotte Barslund (Doubleday; Denmark)
Big Sister, by Gunnar Staalesen, translated by Don Bartlett (Orenda Books; Norway)  

HT: The Rap Sheet