Body Double – Hanna Johansson

submondo is located in a basement with a door that tends to jam. The film has already started when I get there, but it doesn’t matter. Submondo lets you come and go as you please. It’s still light out when I get there, but inside the theater it’s dark, lights off.

I take a seat in the far back and sink into the soft red velvet. Today’s screening is a movie about a woman who becomes witness to a murder. She sees it all in a mirror. Over and over, we’re shown what the woman witnessed in the mirror. An image of a shiny knife being raised. An image of the mirror that’s suddenly splattered with blood. Watching the movie, I can’t stop thinking about the woman’s nails. They’re perfectly oval, painted in mother-of-pearl white.

I watch the woman’s nails as she holds a white Bakelite phone receiver, as she lights a cigarette, as she opens her marbled green compact to check in the little round makeup mirror that nobody has followed her onto the street, and as she, in one of the film’s last scenes, closes her hand around a small silver gun. The gun looks like a toy. She follows the murderer onto the street.

She follows the sound of the murderer’s footsteps. It’s a long take. All you hear is the sound of heels against the sidewalk, like a ricocheting heartbeat. She turns the corner and fires. She shoots the murderer. But nobody believes her when she says the person she’s killed is a murderer. Nobody has heard about the murder she describes, the murder she witnessed, the murder in the mirror. The victim is not missed by anyone. Nobody knows what she’s talking about when she tells them what she’s seen.

They think she’s crazy. She’s detained and locked up in a mental hospital. In her iris, in the eye’s mirror, we see the murderer’s silhouette. That’s the film’s final image. The lights in the theater come on. It’s an entertaining movie. The ending is open to interpretation. When I enter the street again it’s dark outside. I walk home along the canal.

I unlock the door to my building, cross the yard, and walk up the stairs, all five flights of stairs. I unlock my door and drop the keys in the bowl. I turn on the lights in the hall. I take off my shoes and my coat. I linger in the hall and listen for a moment.

Hanna Johansson began her writing career as a critic and essayist covering topics like fashion, literature, art, and performance, and currently works as the art editor at the Swedish newspaper Svenska Dagbladet. Her debut novel, Antiquity, was awarded the Katapultpriset Prize in 2021. Kira Josefsson is a writer and translator working between English and Swedish. She is the recipient of grants from the PEN/Heim Translation Fund and the Swedish Arts Council. She writes about the intersection of politics, literature, and identity for both Swedish- and English-language publications.

1kitap1.com/en 1kitap1.com/en Scribe Publications 18–20 Edward St, Brunswick, Victoria 3056, Australia 2 John St, Clerkenwell, London, WC1N 2ES, United Kingdom 3754 Pleasant Ave, Suite 223w, Minneapolis, Minnesota 55409, USA First published by Norstedts, Sweden Published by arrangement with Nordin Agency AB, Sweden Published by Scribe 2026 Copyright © Hanna Johansson 2026 Translation copyright © Kira Josefsson 2026 All rights reserved.

The publisher expressly prohibits the use of this book in connection with the development of any software program, including, without limitation, training a machine-learning or generative artificial intelligence (AI) system. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher.

The moral rights of the author and translator have been asserted. This is a work of fiction. All the characters, organisations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Scribe acknowledges Australia’s First Nations peoples as the traditional owners and custodians of this country, and we pay our respects to their elders, past and present 9781 761381 94 2 (Australian edition) 978 1 917189 51 4 (UK edition) 978 1 761386 61 9 (ebook) Catalogue records for this book are available from the National Library of Australia and the British Library.

scribepublications.com.au scribepublications.co.uk scribepublications.com 1kitap1.com/en I want to tell you. I’m going to. 1kitap1.com/en the image is of a department store, a fairly timeless image. Matte light, bluish. Beige marble, mirrors and chrome, two escalators that cross each other like a seam through the building. One going down, the other up. On the escalator going down is a woman. She’s about thirty, perhaps a little younger, perhaps a little older; her outfit makes it hard to tell.

This is a short excerpt from the opening of “” by Unknown, quoted for review and introduction purposes. All rights belong to the copyright holders.

Book Information

• Unique ID: 1aad069c24715ef9
• File Extension: .pdf
• File Size: 1,143,416 bytes (1.09 MB)
• Title: –
• Author: Unknown
• ISBN: 9781761381942, 9781917189514, 9781761386619
• Pages: 169
• Language: English (en)

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• Estimated Reading Time: 282.25 minutes
• Total Words: 56,450
• Total Characters: 296,702
• Average Words per Page: 334.02
• Average Characters per Page: 1755.63

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