From father to son
By May Schack
Every night a father tells his son a fairy tale about the King and Prince who have lost their home and have gone out into the world to find and kill the White Queen. The fairy tale is a metaphor for the novel’s homeless couple, a father and son, who live outside society - and more importantly is hiding from it. When the novel opens in 1986, the boy is six years old. He doesn’t go to school, but is taught by his father, a well-read and rather unconventional man. The boy, however, is oblivious to his father’s eccentricity because of their socially isolated existence. The novel is told from the boy’s point of view and he remains unswervingly loyal to his father who constitutes his whole world. The relationship between them is depicted with particular tenderness.
Jonas T. Bengtsson has written an unusual and highly original novel about living outside society and its norms. As in every good folktale the protagonists travel from place to place where they undergo fresh trials. They learn to fly under the radar by using only cash or by stealing.
What could have been a conventional novel in the style of social realism about an intelligent, mentally disturbed man on the run from the authorities with his son has been set within in the poetic frame of the cruel fairy tale with great success.
However, in contrast to fairy tales, there can of course be no happy ever after - the father’s attempt to kill the White Queen in the shape of a botched assassination of a young politician puts an end to the pair’s adventures. Part Two jumps to 1996 where the boy is now a disruptive, pot-smoking teenager in his mother’s new family. He is successful at school, but cannot embrace any values or enter into any sort of community. This applies to many other characters he meets on his journey through more or less questionable environments, vividly depicted with both clarity of vision and a particularly brutal fantasy. Life is about the survival of the fittest. Ultimately, this is a novel about what we pass on to each other. And how we survive the fragility of the human condition.
Translated by Charlotte Barslund
