Swedish-New Zealand writer Linda Olsson´s first novel Let me Sing You Gentle Songs had an instantaneous  worldwide success – 100.000 copies have been printed in the United States so far, 300.000 of the Swedish translation alone, other language versions have followed in German, Dutch, Danish, Norwegian, Italian, Polish and Japanese, and it will soon be available also in Spanish, Serbian, Czech, Chinese and Korean. When it was published in America as Astrid and Veronica, the New York Times Book Review talked of its "themes of secrecy, passion and loss in the shape of a double helix, intertwining the stories of two women, one young and one nearing the end of life, around the axis of their unlikely friendship", and thought its " braiding together of the two women's voices (…) simply so beguiling." The novel is set in New Zealand and Sweden.