＊本书提名权威的August Prize，主办单位如此评价这本书：The Woyzeck case has fascinated authors and playwrights for two centuries. When Steve Sem-Sandberg takes on the mythological story he makes a psychological drama about jealousy and post traumatic stress in a Europe torn by war. The story casts long shadows into our time. The world portrayed via a personal failure.
＊本书有英语样章、英语读者报告、英语书评可提供！
 
作者写这本书的灵感来自于Georg Büchner的知名舞台剧Woyzeck，关于一位士兵如何在一次充满愤怒以及嫉妒的争论之下如何谋杀了自己心爱的女人，决定逃兵。这是一个真实发生的案件，而编剧George Büchner在1836年创作出的舞台剧从此成为欧洲戏剧界的经典作品。在这本小说中，作者幻想了一个被战争摧毁的欧洲，更探讨了人类如何是一个社交的动物。我们人类是如此的脆弱，心里面都有某种程度的深渊。
 
关于作者：
作者在2009年突破了国际图书市场，他的书Emperor of Lies获得瑞典最权威的August Prize，版权售出27个国家。这本书之后又获得The Nines Grand Award、提名了Nordic Council Literary Award、英国的Independent Foreign Fiction Prize 以及瑞士的 The Jan Michalski Award。他的2016年小说The Chosen Ones获得法国The Prix Medicis奖、Rentree Litteraire奖以及The Transfuge Prize。
 
他善于把结合真实历史事件以及他的虚构故事，展现出每件事情的多面性，也因此表现出人类的复杂性。
 
 
 
好评：
Sometimes there’s a novel that, like a razor blade, cuts through the noise from the contemporary fiction. Steve Sem-Sandberg’s ”W.” is such a novel: composed by fragments from historical documents, arranged in a strong artistic vision, “W” convinces us that the novel still can ask the question about what a human really is. […] ...”W.” is a piece of art […] －－Göteborgs-Tidningen
 
Steve Sem-Sandberg’s new novel W shines from within, as from a thousand small inexorable lamps directed into the most acute. […] a sharp and hyper sensitive novel about abandonment and violence. […] it sparks electrically from this true literary masterpiece sharp in style. […] Steve Sem-Sandberg has with W written a close study in human exposure and male rage. To read it is like to crossing the surface, gasping, and greedily devour the air that only really good literature can bring. It’s a fantastic, spell-binding and terrible book.——Dagens Nyheter
 
It’s not a book that offers comprehension, but something bigger: a feeling of solidarity. […] One could call Steve Sem-Sandberg’s W for a masterly psychological case study – it wouldn’t be wrong – but it would in some way also to be reducing this novel, to make it something too general. No, it’s the collaboration and tension between the reader and Woyzeck, rather than the attempts to find more profound motives, that makes this reading experience so strong. You walk by his side with a feeling of solidarity, not comprehension. You are led to the scaffold without having gotten any proper answer on the question about the nature of the crime, if it was in the heat of the moment or the revenge for an entire life of injustices. And when you are closing the book it’s as if the broadaxe falls down a second time.——SvD
 
Steve Sem-Sandberg is well conversant with the sources without writing documentary. Woyzeck’s pains are uncovered gently and with empathy. […] Steve Sem-Sandberg’s novel is well-heeled and sensual. The language is slightly archaic and very beautiful. ——Aftonbladet
 
Sem-Sandberg does all of this in an peerlessly shaped prose […] Read against Büchner´s furious fragmentary play, W becomes a more complete and serious story about a disrupted fate. Within the Swedish art of novels it belongs to the greatest experiences I have had for several years. ——Martina Lowden, Kulturnytt i P1
 
… Sem-Sandberg maintains the ambiguity until the very last magnificent sentence. […] The prose is impeccable throughout the novel, at times very beautiful and coloured by the time the story takes place in. […] W.  is an ethically exhorting novel, filled with a matter-of-fact pathos. Its sometimes indigestible gravity is something to be grateful for.  ——Göteborgs-Posten
 
A brilliant nightmare about the exposed human […] W. is a dark philosophical novel about the human exposure in life. […] W. is a brilliant and poignant novel. It may provide Steve Sem-Sandberg with his second August Prize. ——Upsala Nya Tidning
 
I know no other Swedish author, after Birgitta Trotzig, who penetrates the human suffering like Steve Sem-Sandberg does. But he writes as if he is holding the rhythm and the beauty of the text in front of him – and us – like the only protection against an abyssal pessimism regarding the human nature. ——Gefle Dagblad
 
Sem-Sandberg draws both a tender, honest and nuanced – but never simplified - portrait of his main character. Besides, he does never disregard the horrible crime this person once committed. […] The character portrayal of "W." is impressively flexible. It’s never loose in Sem-Sandberg’s depictions of the time and surroundings neither. […] The language is something else that impresses in this novel. Muffled and present it grows and Sem-Sandberg lets the portrayal be marked by this somewhat archaic vocabulary and tone that provoke so clear images. It feels like we’re stepping right into “W:s" limited field of experience and vision. […] Sem-Sandberg knows how one tells about a life. With “W” he has created another nuanced novel. A story that challenges and enlightens. That confirms his position as one of our most solid, and at the same time always surprising, authors. ——Kristianstadsbladet