Part One: Typhus, shit and a dismembered corpse: this is the crime novel of the year, '1793'
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Something smells rotten in Sweden.
It is not Hamlet who hears it from the mouth of a sentinel, nor Shakespeare who writes it, but the nauseating stench distilled by
1794
(Salamander), the sequel to one of the great literary phenomena of this pandemic year.
The stark, dirty and brutal realism
of the Swede Niklas Natt och Dag (Stockholm, 1979) returns to Spanish bookstores with a new sample of his talent to plunge the reader fully into that environment of moral rot and the smell of a latrine, but
The perfect backdrop for a criminal investigation in which
Swedish aristocracy and Stockholm underworld meet again
This second part of the trilogy started with
1793
It was not something premeditated, but an unexpected gift (and something poisoned) for someone who spent several years trying to publish his literary debut.
«
I wrote eight different drafts of that first book
, but I was systematically rejected by all the publishers to whom I sent it, ”says Natt och Dag by videoconference.
"When I finally got offered a contract, I never thought the novel would be successful enough to create the need for a sequel."
The unexpected success gave him the opportunity to stay in that world he had created after a
long and arduous documentation process
.
But not everything was going to be so easy: «the problems immediately arose.
Although the end of the first book was somewhat ambiguous, it is assumed that one of the two protagonists dies.
For a moment I thought about reliving it and writing another similar book, but then I realized that I had to find another way.
And I am grateful for having found it.
It is as if Watson was left without Sherlock Holmes after solving their first case together, an orphan that, however, leads the author to redouble his bet and bring out his talent.
I have investigated the shameful part of Sweden that is not associated with slavery
The new path passed through the appearance of new characters, such as the adolescent aristocrat Erik Tres Rosas, on whom a good part of the plot revolves.
1794
, and a new setting, Saint Bartholomew, an island in the French West Indies that was part of Sweden for nearly a century.
A place populated by
thieves, pirates, murderers
... and thousands of slaves treated with the cruelest contempt.
In fact, it became one of the largest slave markets of the time, becoming the only neutral port in all of the West Indies.
«It seemed like a perfect opportunity to
investigate that shameful part of Swedish history, which is not usually associated with slavery
because it was not one of the colonial powers of the time.
Every 10 years or so someone digs into that topic, and five minutes later, everyone forgets about it again.
I thought it was the right time to remember that dark past in the history of our country, which since the Second World War has presented itself to the world with a certain arrogance as a progressive nation. ”The Stockholm that he managed to recreate so vividly in the first novel is still there, with its labyrinth of smelly alleys populated by drunks, madmen and women to whom life does not give truce.
What also remains unchanged is
the fury with which the author is primed with his characters
and the ghoulish details that dot the reader like pus from a popped pimple.
"For some strange reason,
Star wars
it has been a common reference between me and my editors, "says the writer with a half smile.
«One of them told me that if I had written the script for
The Empire Strikes Back
, the film would end with Darth Vader cutting off Luke Skywalker's hand.
Fade to black.
Perhaps the darkness that falls on the characters is a slight promise of a small flash of light in the third book ... but I do not promise anything.
And the smile widens maliciously.
Before the success I was systematically rejected by all publishers
Niklas, the once scary and lonely boy who took refuge in reading to inhabit other worlds, has managed to be a writer, which he has always dreamed of, but along the way he has also become a misanthrope capable of integrating philosophical ideas of great depth into the suffocating criminal-historical plot of his books.
«The world is getting older, but not better
: all these advances that we call civilization are doing nothing other than allowing us to bring the evil of the world to a scale never seen before ", says one of the characters in this sequel, an echo of what the author himself thinks.
“I cannot hide the fact that I have very unflattering thoughts about humanity.
It's easy to think that everything has improved ... for some of us, at least.
We have good dentists,
You no longer have to go to the blacksmith to have your teeth pulled out with the pliers.
But human nature remains the same
That hasn't changed at all. ”Neither the success of his novels (“ I'd be very happy to keep a third of the readership of the first book ”), nor the good data on the increase in reading and book sales since the beginning of the pandemic reconcile him with the human race.
“In Sweden at least those figures have a lot to do with audiobooks, something that for me is not equivalent to reading.
Try listening to a Dostoevsky audiobook
and you will find out.
Book sales will continue to decline and the level of stupidity of our species will increase in proportion as the importance of literature declines.
If you do not know the language in depth, you will never access a certain degree of abstract thinking, because you need to translate your ideas into words.
In conclusion: we will become more and more stupid and in the end we will all die »
.
Fade to black.
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