Kallocain - Wyrms.de

Swedish language

Published Sept. 3, 1941 by Trut Publishing.

ISBN:: 978-91-88275-05-9

This is a novel of the future, profoundly sinister in its vision of a drab terror. Ironic and detached, the author shows us the totalitarian World-state through the eyes of a product of that state, scientist Leo Kall. Kall has invented a drug, kallocain, which denies the privacy of thought and is the final step towards the transmutation of the individual human being into a "happy, healthy cell in the state organism." For, says Leo, "from thoughts and feelings, words and actions are born. How then could these thoughts and feelings belong to the individual? Doesn't the whole fellow-soldier belong to the state? To whom should his thoughts and feelings belong then, if not to the state?" As the first-person record of Leo Kall, scientist, fellow-soldier too late disillusioned to undo his previous actions, Kallocain achieves a chilling power and veracity that place it among the finest novels to emerge …

This is a novel of the future, profoundly sinister in its vision of a drab terror. Ironic and detached, the author shows us the totalitarian World-state through the eyes of a product of that state, scientist Leo Kall. Kall has invented a drug, kallocain, which denies the privacy of thought and is the final step towards the transmutation of the individual human being into a "happy, healthy cell in the state organism." For, says Leo, "from thoughts and feelings, words and actions are born. How then could these thoughts and feelings belong to the individual? Doesn't the whole fellow-soldier belong to the state? To whom should his thoughts and feelings belong then, if not to the state?" As the first-person record of Leo Kall, scientist, fellow-soldier too late disillusioned to undo his previous actions, Kallocain achieves a chilling power and veracity that place it among the finest novels to emerge from the strife-torn Europe of the twentieth century.

2 editions

cblgh@bookwyrm.social reviewed Kallocain by Karin Boye

Swedish cousin of Brave New World, authored by a lesbian poet in 1940s Sweden

5 stars

finished reading kallocain during lunch, it has such luscious sentences

it feels like a poem wearing the guise of a novel. the first time i tried to read it, i read like i would any other novel. but for me, it only revealed itself, and was frankly only understandable, when taking the pace down a few notches

i don't know what translation keeps the dreamy poetry of its sentences intact; you could always learn swedish

finished reading kallocain during lunch, it has such luscious sentences

it feels like a poem wearing the guise of a novel. the first time i tried to read it, i read like i would any other novel. but for me, it only revealed itself, and was frankly only understandable, when taking the pace down a few notches

i don't know what translation keeps the dreamy poetry of its sentences intact; you could always learn swedish