The publishing house looks like a ship moored in the city center, a large, pale building crowned with a roof terrace. The facade is a grid of wood and granite, and flags flutter in the wind, adorned with an ornate but resolute R. R for Rydéns.

It is on the roof terrace that the parties are held. Standing up there you feel as if you own the entire city, as if everything is lying at your feet. Slowly you are enveloped by the twilight, which creeps closer and closer as the hum of conversation grows louder and the countless fairy lights begin to glow. Young men in white shirts and black waistcoats stand behind the bar, they pour a glass of chilled white wine and place the glass on a small paper coaster bearing the same R as on the flags: gold leaf against a cream-colored background. It is said that one such coaster was found among Strindberg’s effects after his death.

The autumn party marks the real beginning of the publishing year. Anticipation fills the air, like at the start of a new school semester, and this season’s authors mingle nervously, with the hopes of the finance department weighing heavily on their shoulders.

But the spring parties are the best, those are the ones that are legendary. You stand in the endless May evening, watching the dusk slowly descend over rooftops and church spires, and everything feels like a game. It doesn’t matter if we employees have a little too much to drink, because on this occasion we don’t have to be representative and professional, we are allowed to celebrate the year that has passed, the prizes and nominations that were acknowledged only with the obligatory cake at coffee time in December because everyone was so stressed in the run-up to Christmas, the spring debuts that have gone better than we dared hope. We forget that several weeks of hard work lie ahead, with everything that has to go to print before midsummer, the final edits, the blurbs for all those back covers, the proofs, the manuscripts you fall asleep over and eventually almost know by heart, those that will generate fresh acclaim and nominations in the autumn. We help ourselves to another glass beneath the vast lavender-colored sky.