1947

A Metro book of the year
Interweaving the social, political, and personal, in 1947 Elisabeth Åsbrink chronicles the year that 'now' began.
In 1947, production begins of the Kalashnikov, Christian Dior creates the New Look, Simone de Beauvoir writes The Second Sex, the CIA is set up, a clockmaker's son draws up the plan that remains the goal of jihadists to this day, and a UN Committee is given four months to find a solution to the problem of Palestine.
In 1947, millions of refugees flee across Europe looking for new homes, among them Elisabeth Åsbrink's father.
In 1947, the forces that will go on to govern all our lives during the next 70 years first make themselves known.

Elisabeth Åsbrink is a journalist and author. Her parents were Hungarian and English, and she was born and raised in, and now lives in, Sweden. Her previous books have won the August Prize, the Danish-Swedish Cultural Fund Prize, and Poland's Kapuscinski Prize. 1947 (the first of her books to be published in English, by Scribe in 2017) won the prestigious Letterstedt Prize, was translated into 19 languages, and was published in the UK, Australia, the USA, Italy, France, Germany, Spain, Brazil, South Korea, Poland, Denmark, Finland, and Norway, among others. Her latest book is Made in Sweden.