A pioneering work of dystopian fiction from one of Sweden's most acclaimed writers Written midway between Brave New World and Nineteen Eighty-Four, as the terrible events of the Second World War were unfolding, Kallocain depicts a totalitarian 'World State' which seeks to crush the individual entirely. In this desolate, paranoid landscape of 'police eyes' and 'police ears', the obedient citizen and middle-ranking scientist Leo Kall discovers a drug that will force anyone who takes it to tell the truth. But can private thought really be obliterated? Karin Boye's chilling novel of creeping alienation shows the dangers of acquiescence and the power of resistance, no matter how futile. Translated with an introduction by David McDuff
About the Author
Karin Boye was a Swedish poet and novelist.She is perhaps most famous for her poems, of which the most well-known ought to be"Yes, of course it hurts"(Swedish: "Ja visst gör det ont") and"In motion"(Swedish: "I rörelse"). She also wrote a few novels including"Kallocain". Inspired by the rise of National Socialism in Germany, it was a portrayal of a dystopian society in the vein of Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four and Huxley's Brave New World (though written almost a decade before Nineteen Eighty-Four). In the novel, an idealistic scientist named Leo Kall invents Kallocain, a kind of truth serum.Boye died in an apparent suicide when swallowing sleeping-pills after leaving home on April 23, 1941.
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