Kallocain

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Kallocain is a 1940 published novel by the Swedish writer Karin Boye . Kallocain is a dystopia and describes a truth serum named after its inventor Leo Kall in the fictional novel .

Kallocain , German first edition, Gutenberg Book Guild 1947

The world

The novel paints a very gloomy picture of the future: two superpowers, the world state on the one hand and the universal state on the other, have divided the earth among themselves.

The hero Kall lives in a totalitarian world state that completely determines the lives of its citizens. The life of the people takes place in underground cities, the surface can only be entered with special permission. The cities are highly specialized, the novel is set in chemical city number 4 . The residents have a regular job , but also have to do police or military service several times a week (after work).

The society as a whole is organized extremely militaristically : the only common salutation is “fellow soldier” (Swedish “medsoldat”). Celebrations are not danced, but marched. It goes without saying that the standardized private flat is also equipped with microphones and cameras. The scarce leisure time and the aforementioned surveillance also lead to a drop in the birth rate. Nonetheless, any offspring that have emerged are brought up in state institutions from an early age. After completing their training, the young people are relocated to other cities as required, without being able to maintain any contact with the family.

The plot

The work is told from the perspective of Leo Kall in the first person. Leo Kall is a chemist who faithfully fulfills his duties. He has no ambitions critical of the regime , on the contrary, he has made a very interesting invention for the state: the pale green liquid Kallocain , which acts as an infallible truth serum. Those who receive it reveal their most secret and innermost thoughts to each interviewer - and that without any medical side effects.

The state naturally intends to look for enemies of the state in this way . The problem: Even the first, voluntary test candidates reveal telltale thoughts - without exception. There is also a real sect of dissenters who dream of peaceful coexistence, but this is discovered more by chance.

In principle, the existence of the drug boils down to the fact that anyone could try to get any fellow soldiers out of the way: a denunciation , an injection, a confession, a conviction, an execution . In the novel it is shown that the mistrust that already exists and is fueled by the state can be multiplied. One of the reasons for denouncing is to forestall the other who might otherwise denounce. Leo Kall denounces his department head Rissen, as he is convinced, among other things, that he has a relationship with Kall's wife Linda. In the fictional world of this novel, marriages are purely a community of convenience - they serve to generate offspring. They are usually divorced as soon as the children are out of the house, i.e. when they are five years old when they are sent to an education camp.

When Kall now - privately and unobserved - tries to get Linda to confess her relationship with the drug, she reveals to him that she rather has real feelings for Kall, which is quite unusual. She forgives him for using the drug, and so they want to continue their lives together.

Now, of all times, the city is being conquered by the troops of the universal state and Kall kidnapped due to his importance as a scientist. From then on he lived in captivity, which, however - he already noticed in the prologue of the book - hardly noticeably differed from the previously offered "freedom". The meaning of the prologue does not become apparent to the reader until the end of the book.

Literary and contemporary history

The novel is somewhat similar to George Orwell's 1984 , but was written around eight years earlier. It also reflects the real conditions in the Third Reich or the early Soviet Union , but no dates are given or usable geographical information is given. In fact, Kallocain can only be classified as a dystopia to a limited extent . It is more of a covert criticism of National Socialism with which Sweden collaborated. The novel thus belongs to the so-called Swedish readiness literature , which should motivate its readers to maintain basic democratic values .

Impact history

The work was translated into more than ten languages ​​and adapted in 1980 by Hans Abramson in a TV series. German translations (1947 by Helga Clemens; 1992 by Helga Thiele; 2018 by Paul Berf) have been published under the title Karin Boye: Kallocain , ISBN 3-518-38760-X and ISBN 3-89029-009-4 . The German editions were given the additional title A novel from the 21st century .

Web links

output

  • Karin Boye: Kallocain , translated by Helga Clemens, Gutenberg Book Guild, Zurich 1947, German first edition.
  • Karin Boye: Kallocain: novel from the 21st century , translated by Helga Clemens, Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt am Main 1993, ISBN 3-518-38760-X (= Fantastic Library , Volume 303, Suhrkamp-Taschenbuch 2260).
  • Karin Boye: Kallocain: Novel from the 21st century , translated by Paul Berf, btb Verlag 2018, ISBN 33442757754.

literature