Kallocain
Rebound Swedish first edition, 1940
Kallocain (1940) is the first edition of Karin Boye's dystopian novel, published in Swedish the same year it was written. Set in a rigidly totalitarian World State of the future, the novel follows Leo Kall, a chemist who has developed Kallocain, a truth drug capable of forcing complete psychological transparency in anyone who receives it. The State embraces the drug as the ultimate instrument of control. As Kall administers the drug to others and witnesses what it reveals, his own certainties about loyalty, love, and the State begin to unravel.
Written by one of Sweden's most celebrated poets, Kallocain was published nine years before Orwell's 1984 and independently arrived at many of the same conclusions about totalitarianism and the fate of the inner life under absolute power. Boye had made eye-opening visits to both Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia, and the novel was written under genuine political anxiety in neutral Sweden, where authors had to be careful what they published. She died the year after its publication. The novel remained largely unknown outside Scandinavia for more than two decades, and was adapted as a Swedish television miniseries in 1981, directed by Hans Abramson.
This rare Swedish first edition by Albert Bonniers Förlag has been nicely rebound in cloth-backed boards.
Hardcover. First Edition. Octavo, finely bound in half-cloth by Lars Eriksson, with the original wrappers preserved; an attractive, solid copy. Stockholm: Albert Bonniers Förlag, 1940. #11448.
Fine.
Written by one of Sweden's most celebrated poets, Kallocain was published nine years before Orwell's 1984 and independently arrived at many of the same conclusions about totalitarianism and the fate of the inner life under absolute power. Boye had made eye-opening visits to both Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia, and the novel was written under genuine political anxiety in neutral Sweden, where authors had to be careful what they published. She died the year after its publication. The novel remained largely unknown outside Scandinavia for more than two decades, and was adapted as a Swedish television miniseries in 1981, directed by Hans Abramson.
This rare Swedish first edition by Albert Bonniers Förlag has been nicely rebound in cloth-backed boards.
Hardcover. First Edition. Octavo, finely bound in half-cloth by Lars Eriksson, with the original wrappers preserved; an attractive, solid copy. Stockholm: Albert Bonniers Förlag, 1940. #11448.
Fine.
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