No one moves here. This becomes clear long before I pack up the car with all my things, to move here. It leads to countless explanations as to why I’m leaving the city to move more than a thousand kilometers away. Love, that’s the simplest explanation. But it still seems odd that I’m moving. That’s what everyone thinks.

A young woman from Stockholm relocates to her boyfriend’s home town, a small village in the far north of Sweden. But the relationship has ended by the time she arrives at ‘the Place.’
She stays in the village for reasons she herself doesn’t really understand. She gets a job in the local grocery store and rents an apartment. Slowly but surely, she works her way into the Place, and lets the new environment work its way into her. This new society has other, unknown codes. Here you leave the door unlocked, booze at the hotel on Saturdays, drive your car on the ice. But how do you become part of something new?

Elin Willows’ critically acclaimed debut novel is a luminous story about loss and change, written in stripped-down, distinct prose. It examines the tangible mechanics of everyday life, the mentality of a small community and the relationship between freedom and loneliness.

The film adaptation of Inlands premiered in 2020