Hässelby

Hässelby is a novel about many things. It’s about Albert Åberg and his father, who does the best he can and still ends up a helpless idiot. It’s about a minor disaster that strikes the Stockholm suburb of Hässelby in the summer of 1983, and that maybe, only maybe, is responsible for everything. It’s about growing up in a suburb and knowing you’ll never escape. It’s about the collection value of Star Wars action figures, about the rock group The Police, about acausal causalities and everyday synchronicity. It’s a novel that takes the reader from Hässelby to Hong Kong to Normandy by way of resistance struggle, capitulation, and nights of terror, through overfilled ironmonger storerooms and into deserted streets onto which rubbish is emptied in the first light of dawn.

From chapter I:

A man walks along Sveavägen one evening in the beginning of September. It is raining, which is why the man is holding an open umbrella in his right hand. He is quite tall, stooped, and leans forward as he walks through the rain, a hand holding the collar of his coat. His coat is grey. His shoes are smart. They were shiny when he left home, now they’re just wet. The man walks up Sveavägen, and there is nobody that knows him here, since he doesn’t come from these parts. On the map the place he comes from is just a few miles away, but in reality the distance between these two points is impassable. It is clear from how he walks, from his decisive, regular steps over the asphalt, that he is on an errand. Now and again he glances sideways, but generally just stares into the ground and walks on. Coming level with Tunnelgatan he stops for an instant, stands and gazes up the steps. Then he walks on, the rain getting increasingly heavy. This is one of the year’s last big summer showers. Soon, when autumn takes hold, the rain will be replaced by snow. A great deal of snow. But now it’s raining. The man quickens his pace and is oblivious to the water splashing him each time a passing car drives through one of the many puddles at the edge of the road. The traffic is heavy, hard to believe at this time of day, but it is. And among all the cars, the Volvos, the Mercedeses and SUVs, are a large number of trucks, all identically coloured. All grey. He takes a glance at one or two, thinks the logo is not one he recognises. He walks on for some metres. He stops. He looks right, and then left. There is a lot of traffic in all directions. The man waits. Takes his umbrella down. He is bald, and the water runs down his neck, but he seems not to notice. Then he takes four decisive steps out into the road, stops again, turns to his left, and for a split second is lit up by the headlights of a truck coming towards him, before he is hit. Sweden’s population figures have just fallen by one.

Translated by Erik Skuggevik and Deborah Dawkin