Thorsten Jonsson

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Thorsten Jonsson

Thorsten Jonsson (born April 5, 1910 in Hornsjö, Nordmaling municipality , † April 25, 1950 in Stockholm ) was a Swedish journalist, writer and translator.

life and work

Thorsten Georg Jonsson studied at Stockholm University and then worked for the Umebladet newspaper until 1935 . After moving to Stockholm, he worked for Frihet newspaper and Tiden magazine ; he married in 1937 and from 1938 to 1942 was editor of the conversation lexicon at Bonnier- Verlag. From 1943 to 1946 he was New York correspondent for the Swedish newspaper Dagens Nyheter . He then worked as the cultural editor of this newspaper until his death. At the age of 40 he suddenly died of a heart attack.

Jonsson has translated texts by John Steinbeck , William Faulkner and Ernest Hemingway into Swedish. Hemingway influenced his writing style. Jonsson was a "representative of factual, realistic prose", his spelling was "precise and simple". Some of the topics in his novels are based on real criminal cases that he got to know during his time as a journalist in Umeå and "contain scientifically supported descriptions of pathological cases".

Jonsson's most important work is the novel Konvoj (1947), which has also been translated into German. The title alludes to the ships that traveled to North America in a military escorted convoy during World War II . Very different people spend 19 days at sea on the ship “Barama” in the middle of a convoy to Canada. Among them is Borowski, plagued by memories of the Polish resistance movement and pictures of Nazi extermination camps . Everyone in this motley bunch has their stories from destroyed Europe; they are afraid of possible attacks by German submarines , they suffer from the boredom on board and worry about the future, which will divide them in different directions.

Publications

Swedish first editions

  • 1933 Utflykt (poetry)
  • 1938 Som ett träd 1938 (poetry)
  • 1939 Som det brukar vara ( short stories)
  • 1941 Fly till vatten och morgon ( short stories)
  • 1942 Sex Americans: Hemingway, Faulkner, Steinbeck, Caldwell, Farrell, Saroyan (essays)
  • 1947 Konvoj (Roman)
  • 1949 Mörk sång
  • 1950 Dimman från havet ( short stories)
  • 1951 Synpunkter (essays)

German language edition

  • People in a convoy (translation: Tabitha von Bonin), Tessloff, Hamburg 1951

literature

  • Per-Olof Erixon: Ett spun over svarta ingentinget. Linjer i Thorsten Jonssons författarskap . Carlsson, Stockholm 1994, ISBN 91-7798-826-4 .
  • Tomas Lidbeck: De bortglömda författarnas bibliotek . BTJ, Lund 2007, ISBN 978-91-7018-577-9 .
  • Tomas Lidbeck: Thorsten Jonsson 1910-50 . On the Stockholm City Library website .
  • Christina Söderhjelm-McKnight: America in the works of Thorsten Jonsson . University of California, Berkeley 1978.
  • Nordic literary history . Volume II. Fink, Munich 1984, ISBN 3-7705-2105-6 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Jonsson, Thorsten . In: Gero von Wilpert (ed.): Lexicon of world literature AK . Deutscher Taschenbuch Verlag, Munich 1997, ISBN 3-423-59050-5
personal data
SURNAME Jonsson, Thorsten
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Jonsson, Thorsten Georg
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Swedish author
DATE OF BIRTH April 5, 1910
PLACE OF BIRTH Hornsjö, municipality of Nordmaling
DATE OF DEATH April 25, 1950
Place of death Stockholm