Swedish Contemporary Fiction 1
Kjell Johansson (b. 1941) I have an unusual persp
ective on Kjell Johansson. I walk around in his novels every day and can hear echoes of his lads, old men and women when I open my window in the morning. The Midsommarkransen neighbourhood, where I live, was Stockholm’s first planned suburb. In those days it was a little factory community just south of the metropolis, built for the workers at the L M Ericsson telecoms company. Today, Midsommarkransen is populated mainly Bad People, 227 p. 2021, Weyler Rights: Sebes & Bisseling Literary Agency When David, a retired school janitor, suffers a breakdown at his old workplace, he reluctantly agrees to speak to the school psychologist, Lotti. Over a series of visits to David’s home – the formerly ramshackle suburban house that David grew up in – Lotti teases out some of the details of his past. It Was Not Me, 204 p. 2011, Weyler Rights: Sebes & Bisseling Literary Agency Eva – the daughter from The House by the Dam – has fallen in love with Axel, a distant relative of her father. Axel has decided to follow her back to Stockholm, and with him, she dreams of a life where she could belong in the world. But the memories of her childhood are hard to escape. The Room Under the Floor 341 p. 2006, Weyler Rights: Sebes & Bisseling Literary Agency In a poor district south of Stockholm, two children have made a secret room under the floor. That’s where they go to hide when reality becomes too scary. The third part of the Midsummer Wreath series is set in the late 19th century. by media folk, web designers and other assorted people, but in Kjell Johansson’s Midsummer Wreath series (‘De utsatta’, 1997–2011) – consisting of four novels so far: The House By The Dam (‘Huset vid Flon’), The Lake Without A Name (‘Sjön utan namn’), The Room Under The Floor (‘Rummet under golvet’) and It Wasn’t Me (‘Det var inte jag’) – set mainly in the 20th century, times were tough. Many things were different then, but even more things are the same. Kjell Johansson made his literary debut in 1972 as part of the left-wing trend in culture that often displayed more political commitment than literary talent. His novel Gogol’s Face (‘Gogols ansikte’) was published in 1989 to well-deserved critical acclaim. But with The House By The Dam, Johansson followed the advice to ‘write what you know’. The results hit home in more ways than one. He emerged as a modern proletarian writer portraying the working class who built the nation, without resorting to lecturing or sentimentality. He paints life in the little neighbourhood on a large scale. Matters large and small, shifting class markers, inner conflicts between those who have a little something and those who have nothing at all. Humour and tragedy. It is a peerless, passionate set of novels. My favourite passage – from The Room Under The Floor – tells of children clearing out their deceased mother’s apartment in Midsommarkransen. They talk about how the next tenant will delight in ripping up the cork floor covering and varnish the wooden floorboards underneath, which their mother had called the ‘poor man’s floor’. That sums up the transformation of society in a single image. Jonas Thente Rights sold to: 7 countries Swedish Contemporary Fiction 10 Foto: Weyler