This licentiate thesis, When emotions are allowed to rule, a study on reading literature in a multicultural classroom in upper secondary school, attempts from a didactic perspective to understand literature reading in the school subject Swedish in the light of a multicultural and changing society. From a socio-cultural perspective, the study illustrates the teacher's choice of literature, the teacher's and the students' attitudes to literature, and the ways of reading that are being negotiated in the common reading and what opportunities for understanding and meaning making that are made available. The analyses are based on reception theories and have an underlying intercultural perspective. The study has been conducted in a class represented by students with many different mother tongues in the school subject Swedish during the first year at the natural science programme at an upper secondary school. The main methods are recordings of literature discussions, which have been documented by video and digital voice recorder, qualitative interviews with students and teacher, log books, and the students' novel reading logs. The empirical material is presented in two chapters. The first chapter, The conditions of the reading, focuses on the teacher's and the students' attitudes to literature and literature reading while the second chapter, The actual reading, brings forward the ways of reading that are being negotiated in the common reading of two novels in the class. The results show that there are several factors that are of importance to the understanding and the meaning making that are made possible in the teaching of literature. The students speak about experience oriented attitudes focusing on life experiences and cultural meetings. This differs from the teacher's attitude which is focused on providing the students with language skills and literary history education. The study shows how the reading of the novel Herakles (Kallifatides 2006) results in ethic ways of reading and a rejection of the text while the reading of the optional novel leads to a subjective reading and a common interpretation from ways of reading of enjoyment. The study discusses the importance of safeguarding the students' knowledge, experiences, and emotions and of making explicit their different ways of reading as well as the different readings of the teaching. Discussed further is the need for a teaching that catches and challenges the students' general and literary repertoires from various perspectives in order to provide context and contribute to an active meaning making. The study suggests a caring way of reading, which is characterised by interpretive communities focused on openness to the foreign and different view and a reading that strives towards a cognitive, moral, and emotional understanding.