Kristian Lundberg (1966–2022)

Kristian Lundberg, a fairly successful writer, is caught up in debt and finds himself drawn back into the world he once came from – uneducated manual labor. Working by the hour doing dirty, heavy work down in Yarden – the Malmö docks – and barley making ends meet is in a way like coming home. Soon those years of writing for a living seem like a parenthesis, and the memories of growing up poor with a schizophrenic mother come bubbling up to the surface. Stealing twenty minutes of writing every morning, Lundberg writes a slim book that is a meditation on poverty, on climbing and sliding in the class structure, on mental illness, on anger and on the harsh reality of an economic climate that is gearing more and more towards a temporary workforce. The collective punishment. The extremely monotonous work. How you can get tossed out on a whim.

This is really an extraordinary novel. Written in a harshly poetic language, it’s dense and full wrath, sadness and insight. There’s nothing vain or coquette about Lundberg’s descent into the lowest levels of society or his memories of a really tough childhood. It just is. There’s a sense of naked honesty here that really moves me. The book has been a big success among the critics, and I can only hope it serves to buy Lundberg more writing time. But I think this is a book he’ll find it hard to ever match.… (más)