Anna Paterson, an ex-neuroscientist, is now a writer and an award-winning translator from the Germanic languages into English. Her own writing has focused on the relationship between literature and politics. Her most recently published translations are The Chosen Ones, by Steve Sem-Sandberg, and two photo-biographies of the prime minister of Sweden, Olof Palme, and of the secretary general of the UN, Dag Hammarskjöld.