New Swedish Books, autumn 2019 1
43 Autumn 2019 Maria Küchen (b. 1961) An Alphabet
of Space, 408 p. Publisher Natur & Kultur www.nok.se Rights Natur & Kultur Lawen Mohtadi lawen.mohtadi@nok.se Works Sång till en fjäril, YA novel, 2000 Gamarna, novel, 2009 Att flyga, literary non-fiction, 2016 Selected Literary Prizes Guldprinsen 2004 Samfundet De Nios Särskilda pris 2016 Svenska Bibelsällskapets bibelpris 2018 An Alphabet of Space Singing along to “I’m an Astronaut” in the early 70s, I was one of many people enchanted by the space mania that characterised the hope and fears of the time. When I discovered David Bowie’s “Space Oddity” and sang (in shaky English) about Major Tom helplessly floating in eternal orbit, that enchantment was already broken. Space was still there, filled with research stations and scrap metal, but the impatient dreams of humanity had sought new goals. Bowie remained faithful to space, giving it metaphorical meaning in the lyrics of the aforementioned song. Another faithful space devotee is author Maria Küchen, who in her book An Alphabet of Space travels through space with the alphabet as compass, guiding us through the history of culture and technology as well as into the control rooms of earthly geography. From Apollo to the Zodiac. To Küchen, space is both real and metaphorical, both a concept and a reality, the exploration of which puts humanity’s courage and inventiveness to the test. It is a space where human scale is measured up against the eternally incomprehensible notion of infinity, but also a space where Neil Armstrong hastily repaired a broken electrical circuit with a forgotten felt-tip pen and returned. “Your circuit’s dead” sang Bowie and Major Tom got left behind. Küchen’s space is big enough for the both of them. Photo: Ulrika Fallström