At the Swedish Publishing Gala in Stockholm, on Thursday, October 15, 2009, the book Rites of Life was awarded the Swedish Publishing Price for best book in the category non-fiction.

Rites of Life is written and photographed by Anders Ryman, who has traveled to more than twenty different cultures around the globe to document life cycle rituals for this monumental project.

Rites of Life has so far been published in seven languages. Max Ström has published it in both Swedish and English, while the German publishing company Taschen has published two seperate trilingual editions. One in English, French and German and the other in Spanish, Italian and Portuguese.