Sofia Zetterlund's Clinic

Sofia Zetterlund's Clinic is a private psychotherapy practice on Mariatorget, where a controlled, affluent professional environment stands within metres of a square marked by a long history of violent death. The clinic is more than a workplace: its waiting room, reception desk, and consultations organize the novel's encounters with trauma, showing how care begins through ordinary arrangements of time, trust, and conversation even as the violence beyond the office presses into them.

Setting and Interior

The practice occupies the top floor of an old building on Sankt Paulsgatan, next to Tvålpalatset. The three residential apartments on that floor have been converted into offices shared by two dentists, a plastic surgeon, a lawyer, and another psychotherapist. Sofia therefore works within a multi-practitioner professional suite rather than an isolated clinic. The arrangement gives the practice an ordinary institutional character while its private consultations remain a distinct part of her work.

The shared waiting room is cool and modern. Large paintings by Adam Diesel-Frank match the grey sofa and two armchairs, while a bronze sculpture by German-born artist Nadya Ushakova depicts roses on the point of wilting. A small plaque around one stem bears the inscription DIE MYTHEN SIND GREIFBAR. Pale walls, an expensive carpet, and exclusive artworks complete an interior described as conveying discretion and money. The wilting flowers introduce a fragile image into a room designed to appear composed; the contrast is suggestive without turning the space into a simple emblem of recovery or safety.

That professional calm is placed against Mariatorget's past. King Adolf Fredrik lent his name to the square on the condition that it never be used for executions. The narration notes that 148 people have since died there in circumstances more or less comparable to an execution, whether it was called Adolf Fredriks torg or Mariatorget. Numerous murders occurred less than twenty metres from Sofia's building. The distance makes the clinic's setting deliberately uneasy: a place devoted to listening and treatment stands almost alongside a public landscape repeatedly associated with lethal violence.

Reception and Daily Work

After interviews, former medical secretary Ann-Britt Eriksson is hired as the shared receptionist. She arranges appointments and handles administrative duties, giving the clinic a practical structure that depends on coordination as well as private therapeutic attention. When Sofia arrives at eight o'clock, as usual, she asks whether anything has happened that she should know about. Ann-Britt reports that Huddinge Hospital has called to move forward Sofia's appointment with Tyra Mäkelä to eleven and that she has asked Sofia to call back and confirm. The scene establishes how Sofia's clinical day is shaped by contact among the practice, patients, and outside institutions.

The office also receives requests that extend Sofia's work beyond scheduled consultations. At the end of one working day, just as she is ready to leave, social-services worker Rose-Marie Bjöörn calls to ask whether Sofia has experience treating children suffering from war trauma. Elsewhere, after leaving Huddinge Hospital, Sofia is drained by her conversation with Tyra and has agreed to take on another demanding assignment: Lars Mikkelsen of National Crime asks her to join an investigation involving a man who confessed to abusing his daughter and distributing child pornography. These developments show the pressures gathering around Sofia's professional role, though the novel distinguishes the clinic itself from the hospital and police work to which that role connects her.

Consultations and Trust

Sofia's work with Samuel Bai illustrates the effort required to make a consultation possible across differences in language and experience. Samuel initially appears reserved and uninterested. When Sofia suggests speaking Krio instead of English, he becomes more communicative. She learned the West African language during three months in Sierra Leone, and the two talk about life in Freetown and places and buildings they both know. As Samuel recognizes that she can understand something of what he has endured, he begins to trust her; after twenty minutes, Sofia hopes she may be able to contribute something positive. The exchange makes language and shared reference points concrete conditions of connection, rather than treating trust as an automatic consequence of professional authority.

The clinic later becomes the setting for Sofia's first meeting with Linnea Lundström. Ann-Britt announces that Linnea has arrived, and Sofia goes out into the waiting room to meet her. Sofia intends to use the same three-stage treatment structure she has planned for Ulrika Wendin: first, stabilisation and trust, supported by structure, with medication a possibility but not a foregone conclusion; then remembering and working through the sexual trauma; finally, separating traumatic experiences from sexual experiences in the present and future. The sequence makes the treatment's intended progression explicit, from establishing support to addressing memory and then distinguishing past harm from future life.

In a later consultation, Linnea sits in the chair across Sofia's desk. Sofia is surprised at how quickly the girl has come to trust her. Pointing to three drawings, she asks whether one depicts Linnea and another Annette. Linnea looks surprised but does not answer. The moment is small and unresolved: the drawings allow Sofia to approach Linnea's relationships indirectly, while the girl's silence sets a limit on what the session has yet made speakable.

Narrative Significance

The clinic's recurring scenes place administrative routine beside the slow, uncertain work of therapeutic contact. Appointments are moved; a receptionist relays calls; a new client is met in the waiting room; a language choice opens a conversation. These ordinary actions matter because the people entering Sofia's professional orbit carry experiences that cannot be reduced to paperwork, while the practice's orderly appearance cannot remove the violence surrounding their stories.

Its location intensifies that contrast without resolving it. Mariatorget's history and the nearby murders shadow an interior arranged for discretion, and the wilting roses sit within a polished room where trust must be built one encounter at a time. The clinic thus functions as both a working institution and a threshold: outside referrals and investigations bring new demands to Sofia, while within the office, treatment depends on whether another person can begin to speak, or is not yet ready to do so.