Being translated into English by Deborah Bragan-Turner 

Farewell to Panic Beach is a novel about a family that seems to live on a stage where dazzling light and abysmal darkness alternate. In a winding narrative that stretches from 1917 to the present day, we follow the shifts between generations in Kungstornet in Stockholm. During summers, they travel to Panic Beach, an eternity beach filled with animal skeletons and solitary children's games. Much later, a daughter sits in a wintry Berzelii Park with memories of a family filled with losers and exalted ones, all while the shimmering and frightening glow of Panic Beach fades away. Sara Stridsberg has written a magnificent novel about guilt, truth and hope, about saying goodbye, finally and forever.

"... the characters [never become] static. They are flesh-and-blood people who, in the midst of their destinies, begin to hesitate – and therefore this is not just a novel about a strong lust for life and the desire to stop living. It is also a novel about how much people – and a narrator – can do in and with the world, however painful it might be. The novel succeeds largely due to the fact that the language is always marked by an underlying intention and is not overly explicit or transparent. It continues to surprise – and though it is more concise than in Stridsberg's previous novels, it has not lost its sharpness or wings. This allows the family saga to be long and winding without ever losing its momentum. The prose never ceases to be beautiful and pregnant, with its edge directed at the wound that is the story's centerpiece – and there is no doubt that Sara Stridsberg has never been more skilled as a novelist than she is right now."

- Svenska Dagbladet

"... The specific family story has – thanks to Stridsberg's poetic language – become something universal and very powerful. She approaches the great existential questions masterfully. She writes about inheritance, guilt, family, sorrow, and what shapes a person. About life and the passing of time. About what remains when the important people and their voices disappear one by one into eternity, sometimes in an unexpected and painfully sorrowful order. Perhaps it is most of all a novel about growing older? And standing there, not quite the last one left, but with increasingly dreamlike memories. Farewell to Panic Beach is beautiful and endlessly captivating. One of the best novels I've read this year."

- Sydsvenskan

"Farewell to Panic Beach is painfully beautiful and one of Sara Stridsberg's strongest novels."

- Göteborgs-Posten

"Sara Stridsberg skillfully navigates through different layers of time, and it is a novel that is continuously alive. The focus is on the people and their relationships. The history unfolding around them, from the early 20th century to today, is a backdrop, but one that sharpens the story's power and credibility. The language is more straightforward and simpler than in previous novels. [...] Farewell to Panic Beach is an impressive novel in which a dark light sweeps over the gripping human destinies we encounter, not explaining them but bringing them to life. The novel underscores Sara Stridsberg's authorship as one of the most important we have, in its uncompromising nature and persistent desire to see the human in all the difficult things that happen to people; in their falling, in their incapacity, in their eternal longing for love."

- Stefan Eklund, Borås Tidning

"Sara Stridsberg writes poetically and softly, with a kind of lightness that allows the novel to move forward in flowing twists. The view of the Stjärne family is factual and understanding, this is how life can turn out, with its detours, pits, and dark shadows. And deep sorrows. [...] Sara Stridsberg moves seamlessly back and forth in time as she follows the Stjärne family, from David, his mother Laura, and his wife Lykke, to Matti and Hanna, to Nina, Eddie, and Nina's own children. Everything is intertwined, everything is part of the story of who they were and who they became, with Panic Beach as a sort of secretive focal point. At the same time, each carries a great loneliness. It is a warm, penetrating, deeply moving, and utterly wonderful novel with a language that vibrates with emotion and life."

- Falu Kuriren

"... as the novel's characters emerge more clearly from the shadows, it becomes evident that Sara Stridsberg is a incredibly skilled lighting designer. And I am reminded of how every single life in that long family line we all drag behind us deserves its moment on stage. Both in the grand and the grim moments."

- Kulturnytt

"It is dark, of course, and yet I read Farewell to Panic Beach in one breath. This is partly due to Sara Stridsberg's prose, which is as beautiful as it is precise, never using a single word too much or too little. It is also due to the compassion that flows through the novel [...] a novel that further solidifies Sara Stridsberg's position as one of our foremost living authors."

- Jönköpings-Posten