The shrunken space of the pandemic. A broken relationship. Grief for a dying mother and the creeping shadow of illness.

When the celebrated Swedish writer Johanna Ekström found out that she was dying from an eye melanoma she asked her closest friend, Sigrid Rausing, to finish her last book. Rausing transcribed and edited the thirteen handwritten notebooks left by Ekström. The result is a memoir of exceptional depth and intensity, published to critical acclaim in Sweden in 2023. The work showcases Ekström's vivid imagination, writerly precision, and psychological insight, interwoven with Rausing's spare and sober reflections. And the Walls Became the World All Around is a literary experiment, a testament to friendship, and a deep meditation on grief.

"Johanna Ekström's prose towards the end is clear as glass. The last notebooks are amongst the best things she has ever written. Sublime, devastating" - Dagens Nyheter

"What really stays with me is the conjuring of an extraordinary friendship... Greater tenderness is hard to imagine" - Göteborgs-Posten

"What Johanna Ekström does most of all in these texts is to excavate deeper... inwards, backwards, sideways and forwards" - Svenska Dagbladet