EICHMANN IN JERUSALEM

Author: Hannah Arendt
Year: 1992 (1963)
Publisher: Daidalos
Language: Swedish (Translator Barbro & Ingemar Lundberg)

Hannah Arendt’s “Den banala ondskan” (“Eichmann in Jerusalem”) remains one of the most provocative and intellectually rigorous studies of totalitarianism, moral responsibility, and the nature of evil in the twentieth century. Emerging from Arendt’s coverage of Adolf Eichmann’s 1961 trial in Jerusalem for The New Yorker, the book offers both a historical account of the Nazi bureaucrat’s role in the Holocaust and a profound philosophical meditation on the mechanisms of mass murder. With her penetrating analysis and sharp prose, Arendt delivers a work that continues to spark debate among scholars, ethicists, and political theorists to this day.

At the heart of the book lies Arendt’s groundbreaking thesis of the “banality of evil.” Rather than portraying Eichmann as a monstrous figure driven by ideological fanaticism or sadistic cruelty, she presents him as a disturbingly ordinary bureaucrat, a man whose mindless adherence to duty and legalistic rationalisation enabled his participation in genocidal policies. In Arendt’s view, Eichmann’s moral blindness and lack of critical self-examination, rather than inherent malice, made him a key functionary in the Nazi machinery of death. At the heart of the book lies Arendt’s groundbreaking thesis of the “banality of evil.” Rather than portraying Eichmann as a monstrous figure driven by ideological fanaticism or sadistic cruelty, she presents him as a disturbingly ordinary bureaucrat, a man whose mindless adherence to duty and legalistic rationalisation enabled his participation in genocidal policies.

Arendt’s work is methodically structured, meticulously researched, and philosophically astute. She provides a comprehensive account of Eichmann’s career, from his early days as a functionary in the SS to his central role in organising the logistics of deportation and extermination. At the same time, she does not shy away from critiquing the legal and political dimensions of the trial itself, particularly the use of the Israeli court to serve a broader national and symbolic function. While she acknowledges the necessity of justice, she raises concerns about the legal framework under which Eichmann was prosecuted, particularly the retrospective application of laws and the potential for political instrumentalisation.

Despite its intellectual brilliance, “Den banala ondskan” was met with intense controversy, particularly regarding Arendt’s perceived tone and her discussion of Jewish leadership’s role in the Holocaust.

A more confined but no less interesting area of critique, however, was her engagement with Immanuel Kant’s categorical imperative. Arendt accuses Eichmann of distorting Kant’s idea, arguing that he misapplied the principle in his defence. A more rigorous reading of Kant, however, complicates Arendt’s conclusion, raising the unsettling possibility that Eichmann’s actions were, at least formally, consistent with Kantian ethics.

Arendt asserts that Eichmann invoked Kant’s categorical imperative in bad faith, failing to grasp its fundamental emphasis on moral autonomy. Eichmann claimed that he acted according to duty, submitting to laws that he did not himself create, and he saw his role as implementing the decrees of the Führer rather than exercising independent moral judgment. Arendt dismisses this defence, arguing that Kant’s philosophy demands self-legislation in accordance with universal moral law, rather than blind obedience to external commands. However, this interpretation raises a significant dilemma: Kant’s moral philosophy is famously rigid in its emphasis on duty, and under certain conditions, it may indeed produce the kind of mechanical compliance that Arendt condemns.

In short, Eichmann’s compliance with the categorical imperative was not a matter of genocide, which would hardly be possible to reconcile with Kant’s ideas, but rather of duty and following the law. No single individual can will their own law, but they can will whether to abide by it or not. Willing that the law is universally obeyed seems quite compatible with the categorical imperative.

Many notable thinkers have over the years supported Arendt’s conclusions that a reading of Kant that provides for such heinous acts as the Holocaust is a gross distortion. Carsten Bagge Laustsen and Rasmus Ugilt even go as far as calling it “absurd”. Slavoj Zizek sees it as a circular argument to say that ‘your duty is to do your duty.” Others, like Joshua Halberstam, are less dismissive. For if the act of abiding by the law cannot be elevated to universal law, there seems to be an inherent flaw in our understanding of what law means.

Be it as it will, Arendt’s insights into the bureaucratic nature of modern evil remain profoundly relevant in contemporary discussions of state violence, obedience to authority, and moral responsibility. Her reflections on the dangers of unthinking conformity resonate beyond the historical context of the Holocaust, offering a crucial framework for analysing crimes against humanity in later periods. Including our own era.

MURDER IN THE FAMILY

Author: Cara Hunter
Year: 2023
Publisher: Harper Collins Publishers
Language: English

In an affluent London neighbourhood, a young man is murdered in the garden of a stately townhouse. The Metropolitan Police conduct an investigation, yet despite their efforts, the case yields no arrests. With no clear leads, it is eventually relegated to the archives, another unsolved crime gathering dust in the cold-case cabinet. Decades later, the victim’s stepson approaches a television producer with a proposal that reflects the growing public appetite for true-crime entertainment. His idea is to assemble a panel of experts, criminologists, forensic specialists, psychologists, and lawyers, and task them with solving the decades-old mystery.

The novelty of “Murder in the Family” by Cara Hunter lies neither in its setting nor plot but in its narrative structure. Rather than a conventional story, it unfolds as a script, a transcription of the television show itself. Dialogue lines are interspersed with brief stage directions indicating characters’ movements, expressions, and positioning. The episodes are punctuated by a television critic’s column, as well as text message and email exchanges, adding layers of commentary and context. The investigative process itself remains offstage. The team, assembled before the cameras, reports on their findings and the reader is exposed only to their discussions during filming; never the interrogations, site visits, and forensic analyses that take place between episodes. The result is a story shaped not by direct action, but by the act of performance, blurring the lines between investigation and entertainment.

“Murder in the Family” is the second epistolary or documentary-style book project I have encountered in a short span. The first, “Sleeping Giants” by Sylvain Neuvel (reviewed here in January 2024), struggled to sustain its premise. By contrast, “Murder in the Family” is a more cohesive effort. Its dialogue is largely convincing, and the information conveyed seems relevant not only to the plot but, more importantly, to the characters themselves.

The plot is engaging and immersive, though it spirals out of hand toward the end in pursuit of a bombastic finale. Hunter appears aware of this challenge and makes efforts to maintain a sense of plausibility. She weaves in backstories and character dynamics among the investigative team, designed to introduce both conflict and intrigue. These, too, require explanation, and the author makes a concerted effort to provide it, with varying levels of subtlety.

These challenges may, in part, stem from the book’s intended audience. Written for young adults, who seem to expect heightened drama and neck breaking plot twists, it relies on narrative devices that, while effective in maintaining engagement, ultimately strain credibility. To sustain the attention of less seasoned readers, the author introduces developments that eventually veer from the credible and enter into the forced. Halfway into the novel the central murder mystery has become secondary to the evolving discord between the investigative team members. The book’s cover invites readers to “solve the mystery before they do,” but this challenge is undercut by the steady infusion of new information designed more to generate surprise and suspense than to encourage deduction.

A minor but noticeable detail lies in the portrayal of the novel’s transatlantic cast. Given that the team members hail from various backgrounds and countries, the recurring references to distinctions between British and American English suggest an awareness of cultural and linguistic nuance. Yet, the author forfeits the opportunity to manifest this in the orthography. Therefore, the American character, a former member of New York’s finest speaks of “colours” and “neighbours”. It is easily explained by pointing out that the transcript of a British television show will be in British English, but nonetheless a missed opportunity.

“Murder in the Family” is an entertaining and easily digestible book which, had it been more geared toward the mystery and less he-said-she-said-high-school-drama, could have been a truly engaging reading experience.       

 

THE JEEVES COLLECTION

Author: Sir Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
Year: 1992 (1923, 1925, 1963)
Publisher: Chancellor Press
Language: English

If one has yet to make the acquaintance of Reginald Jeeves, gentleman’s personal gentleman, and his occasionally woolly-headed employer, Bertram Wilberforce Wooster, then one has the good fortune of standing on the precipice of a rare delight. A world inundated by country house antics, aunts of a most fearsome disposition, and engagements formed and dissolved at the drop of a hat awaits.

"The Jeeves Collection" by P. G. Wodehouse is, in short, a smorgasbord of delightful prose, absurd entanglements, and a valet who would have the whole world running smoother than a well-buttered crumpet if given half a chance. The form of the whole bally thing is best characterised as a conglomeration of three short story collections originally titled “Stiff Upper Lip, Jeeves”, “The Inimitable Jeeves”, and “Carry On, Jeeves” published between 1923 and 1963. The plots revolve around Bertram’s gallant but misguided attempts to navigate society, friendships, and the occasional perilous romance, all while Jeeves hovers in the background, dispensing wisdom like a brainy, and often quite smug, but always impeccable oracle in a black tie.

The universe of Jeeves and Wooster abound with memorable characters, all of whom regularly put good old Bertie in the soup; be it the constantly lovesick Bingo Little, the irredeemably over-confident Tuppy Glossop, the tyrannical aunt Agatha, the choleric Roderick Spode, or any other family member, friend, acquaintance, and antagonist. Watching over it all is Jeeves, who, with the quiet confidence of a man who has long since mastered the art of crisis management, extracts his employer from every mess.

Jeeves’ solutions, however, are not always as seamless as one might have preferred, and particularly in situations where one of Bertie’s friends needs to be rescued in one way or other, Jeeves seems to find an almost sadistic pleasure in humiliating his Master. It all turns out well for all parties in the end, but for the most part, it is Bertie who picks up the bill. The happy-go-lucky chum that he is, he seems quite content doing so.

One cannot, of course, read Wodehouse without tripping over the troublesome relics of the British class system. The world of Jeeves and Wooster is one where gentlemen of leisure drift from club to country house, their primary duties involving luncheon, light banter, and avoiding employment (and in Wooster’s case marriage) at all costs. Meanwhile, the true machinery of civilization hums efficiently beneath them, powered by the clerks and workers of the world; some of whom, like Jeeves, while technically in service, are in fact the real puppet masters of the social order.

For all its rowdy escapades, Wodehouse’s world is one in which class boundaries remain firmly intact, though observed with a knowing wink. Bertie, good egg that he is, relies entirely on Jeeves to navigate the deceiving waters of life, never questioning the latter’s superior intellect. Indeed, the Jeeves-Wooster dynamic is less that of employer and servant, and more of an amiable lord-and-vassal arrangement, where the vassal is unquestionably in charge but allows the lord the comforting illusion of authority.

Wodehouse’s language, at last, is a pleasure to behold. Sentences are assembled with the precision of a Swiss watchmaker who has also, in his spare time, mastered the art of comedy. One finds oneself guffawing at the sheer ridiculousness of it all, and if one is not careful, alarming nearby creatures with bursts of unexpected amusement.

In conclusion, life is short and one can never have too much of a good thing. Especially when that good thing involves a valet of Jeeves’s calibre, a cast of characters whose primary purpose seems to be hurling themselves into disaster, and an author whose wit is as keen as Jeeves’ powers of observation and as fiery as Bingo Little’s heart.

CITY IN THE WORLD

Author: Per Anders Fogelström
Year: 1968
Publisher: Albert Bonniers Förlag
Language: Swedish

The story about the ultimate metamorphosis of Stockholm, from an impoverished hamlet to a prosperous, albeit small metropolis, reaches its completion in the fifth and final instalment of Per Anders Fogelström’s classic “City”-pentalogy: “Stad i världen” (“City in the World”). During the preceding books, Fogelström has chronicled how the dilapidated huts that once housed the many denizens of the Swedish capital’s working class were dismantled and triumphantly replaced by stately edifices featuring such blessings of modernity as running water, central heating, and electricity. In the final volume, the population has begun to reap the fruits of public education, job security, and democratic rights. The gulf between the grim struggles of Henning Nilsson, who first migrated into the city in the mid-19th century in “Mina drömmars stad” (see review from August 2024), and the comfortable lives of his descendants a century later could scarcely be deeper.

Fogelström does not end there, however. He is not blind to the new era and the challenges that await the generation that will populate post-war Stockholm. While their grandparents marvel at the privileges that grace their lives, the youngsters, largely oblivious of the hardships endured by their predecessors, stand impatient on their inherited pedestal, making new demands and aiming for loftier horizons, much to the amazement, and sometimes disapproval, of their elders.    

The final abandonment of the old era is symbolised by the death of Emelie Nilsson, Henning’s and Lotten’s daughter, and the backbone of the series. Emelie was a heroine of such monumental proportions that the final success of Henning’s entire lineage depended on her. Cruelly orphaned as a teenager, she was tethered to her destiny by the last words of her dying mother, Lotten: “Take care of your brother”; words that would etch themselves into the core of her heart and define her entire life. Yet Emelie’s care would extend far beyond her brother; she embraced family, neighbours, and friends with a magnanimity so profound that she became the invisible architect of their development. The progenitor of none, but a mother to all.

Among Fogelström’s characters, one that intrigues more than others in “Stad i världen” is the virtually inconsequential side character Olle Holm. Olle is the archetype of the indignant working-class conservative. He is an honest and hard-working man who is barely scraping by financially but proud to be independent and to appear strong-willed and single-minded. He has little regard for the hardships of others and regularly sets himself as a model for all humanity to emulate. To him, social security is squander, because if he can work to support himself, so can everybody else. He sees no point in aligning the traffic circulation to the right-hand-traffic of the rest of Europe, because he never has reason to drive in Denmark or Germany so why should anybody else, etc. Olle clings fiercely to the myth of his solitary success, scorning the sacrifices of generations past. To him, those who falter below him are lazy, those who ascend above him are crooked. In this character, Fogelström captures the timeless paradox of the man who turns his back on solidarity, seduced by the emotional allure of rugged individualism, even as he unwittingly basks in the warmth of collective labour and sacrifice. A figure whose bitterness and pride foreshadow the discontent that, in later decades, would make part of the working-class shift their allegiance from social democracy to the darker allure of nationalist populism.

The final judgment of Fogelström’s magnum opus can be nothing less than unqualified acclaim as it has indubitably earned its place in the Swedish canon. With the artistry of a master, Fogelström ushers the reader through the ebb and flood of history, never stooping to pedantry or encumbering his prose with technicalities and infodumps. Each historical event weaves seamlessly into the storyline interlocking with the fates of his characters, their actions, thoughts, and feelings. Though every protagonist is born from the author’s imagination, they breathe with the unmistakable vitality of flesh-and-blood Stockholmers of bygone eras. There are no villains in Fogelström’s Stockholm, merely real people who seek their own way of negotiating the vicissitudes of fate. Some prevail. Others succumb. Yet everyone feels achingly tangible, authentic, vibrant, and profoundly human. This, perhaps, is Fogelström’s greatest triumph: not merely to recount the story of a city, but to evoke its soul, embodied in the lives of its people.

 

THE KINGDOM AT THE END OF THE ROAD

Author: Jan Guillou
Year: 2000
Publisher: Piratförlaget
Language: Swedish

The crusades have reached their sad end, leaving the crusaders battered by humiliation, fatigue, and, in the luckiest cases, merely the indignity of survival, as they make their way home to their predominantly European homesteads. Among these weary souls is Arn Magnusson, or, as his fellow Templars knew him, Arn de Gothia; a knight whose life was spared and pockets lined with gold by the magnanimous Sultan Saladin, the conqueror of Jerusalem and paragon of nobility. Surrounded by an entourage of engineers, horsekeepers, physicians, blacksmiths and other denizens of the Middle East, he returns to the land of his fathers in the far north from whence he had departed to serve the Church in its holy quest over twenty years prior. When we encounter him again, it is within the pages of “Riket vid vägens slut (“The Kingdom at the End of the Road”), the third and final part of Jan Guillou's trilogy.

Arn returns to a kingdom united under his childhood friend, King Magnus Eriksson. Yet even as the land stands nominally united, the shadow of discord looms large as a rival dynasty, bolstered by the support of Denmark's monarch, plots its dissolution. Observing the fragile balance, Arn realises that his mastery of swordplay and horsemanship are insufficient to ensure peace in the land and the unchallenged influence for his family. To the consternation of his kin, he puts in motion a peace project of unparallelled ambition based on engineering, trade, and a crushing war machine.

The Arn of the final volume is a figure reshaped and remoulded, bearing little resemblance to the devout and unassuming knight we got to know in the first two books. Gone are the piety and modesty that once defined him. In their stead, we find a man of pride and arrogance. He wears the family crest or the Templar’s cape, symbols once held sacred, alternately as required to promote his personal agenda. He insists on bearing his sword into church, disregarding the reprehension of other parishioners. He is indifferent toward his brother. He taunts his adversaries.

It is tempting to excuse such a transformation as the natural result of a life scarred by trauma and the memories of mayhem and devastation. A man who has seen the worst of humanity and the full scale of its incompetence, corruption, and folly, might well return to the simplicity of his backwater origins cynical and arrogant. Yet such character development demands exploration, an inquiry into the slow erosion of virtue and the creeping dominance of bitterness in the once innocent heart. Alas, Guillou provides none of that. The shift in Arn’s character feels less like the organic development of a man’s soul and more like the result of a writer who has grown tired of his soft-spoken and timid hero and without much ceremony rewrites him as a bad-boy. The result is a screeching dissonance: the Arn Magnusson who departs the Holy Land at the end of “Tempelriddaren” (see review from September 2024) is not the Arn Magnusson who strides into West Gothland in “Riket vid vägens slut”.

Although “Riket vid vägens slut” is less encumbered by heroism and bravado than the first and particularly the second book, there is no shortage of boyish fantasies about a superhero who in this case actually happens to wear a cape. Nowhere is this more evident than in the lengthy account of a bachelor-party, a sequence so satiated with machismo that one suspects it sprang directly from the author's own unresolved issues with adolescence.

And yet, as with most books, hidden in the clutter of verbiage, whether artfully crafted or carelessly strewn, there are some nuggets worthy of contemplation. Toward the end of the novel, Arn Magnusson reflects over his time as a knight templar and about the devastating defeat that the crusaders suffered at the hands of Sultan Saladin. He seeks some divined message in the humiliation, a lesson that God intended for him and the other survivors. And he does this with the most supremely brainwashed mind.

Here stands a warrior, a sword consecrated by holy water and pledged to the service of God by his side. A man who for twenty laborious years has risked life and limb to guard the resting place of the one he considers to be the Son of God. He has knelt in prayer, imploring God’s help in his quest to reclaim the Holy land, all the while being keenly aware how his foes, no less fervently, pray to their God for the same favour. And yet, in the face of unequivocal defeat, he ponders not whether his cause was just or his belief misguided, but instead what subtle knowledge God intends him to discern. This scene provides us with a stark meditation on the nature of fanaticism. It is a lesson, possibly inadvertently, about the maddening resilience of single-mindedness and the inherent futility of reasoning with those who cannot, or will not, entertain doubt.

Having ploughed through Jan Guillou’s entire trilogy, the lasting impression is mixed. Jan Guillou certainly is no Sir Walter Scott. Nor is he a Ken Follett or even a Frans G Bengtsson. He is definitely a far cry from Umberto Eco and the intellectual labyrinths emanating from the Italian’s prolific pen. Yet, it is not in the art of storytelling that Jan Guillou falters. His shortcomings lie instead in the fragments of the tale he chooses to dwell upon. Guillou deserves recognition for his bold excursion into the pre-Gustav Vasa era, a period which most Swedes know scarcely anything about. I also enjoy the well-researched albeit artistically tailored description of the medieval environment, the historical figures, places, and the political games. Yet, the characters he breathes into being remain stubbornly two-dimensional and would belong on the panels of a comic book rather than the pages of serious literature, and the story line is sometimes far too juvenile to befit a 55-year-old writer, or indeed, his 48-year-old reader.  

IN A CITY TRANSFORMED

Author: Per Anders Fogelström
Year: 1966
Publisher: Albert Bonniers Förlag
Language: Swedish

Interbellum Europe saw two major ideologies, divided by banner but united by tyranny and disregard for lives, grow into the powers that would less than two decades later once again draw calamity over the continent. Meanwhile, in the north, people were busy forging the social democracy that after the war would form the bedrock for peace and prosperity in the Scandinavian region. Having gladly unshackled itself from the thankless chore of governing the uncultured mountain brutes that are its westerly neighbours and who more than a century later, much like earthworms and small rodents, still make their living from burrowing for sustenance in the dirt, Sweden was in the midst of transforming its society into the highly productive, innovative, and technologically advanced economy that is its hallmark to this day. From this audacious experiment rose a society where the fruits of the labour of the many would not rot in the troves of the few.

Per Anders Fogelström once more invites us to step through the looking-glass of time to Stockholm, forever metamorphosing, forever restless, in the fourth volume of his City novels, “I en förvandlad stad” (“In a City Transformed”). With his unparallelled knowledge and attention to detail, he brings the old streets, many of which no longer exist, buildings, trams, and historical and fictitious persons to life in a time machine crafted not from cogs and gears, but from the alchemy of words.

Indeed, Fogelström’s narrative and the rise of social democracy are deeply intertwined. The sudden creation of the penniless proletariat on the back of the rapid industrialisation of the 19^th century, was poised to create a backlash. While the farmhands and crofters had been scattered and divided, bound to the vast lands that they had been put to cultivate, the urban workers were packed together by necessity. Before long they had organised themselves, despite the furious opposition from the capital-owners. This moulting process was both driven (Strindberg, Moberg, Martinsson) and chronicled (Fogelström) by the written word.

A simple juxtaposition reveals the distinct voices of these monumental Swedish writers, each a prism refracting the light of their age into singular spectra.

Strindberg, ever the provocateur, wields his pen like a rapier, slicing through the pretensions of power with an elegant arrogance. His caricatures, sharp and unrepentant, gleefully expose the follies of the patriarchy, the institution of marriage, the clergy, press, and academia alike. It is mockery elevated to an art form, a carnival of irreverence.

Moberg, by contrast, discards the flourish for the hammer. His prose is an uncompromising onslaught, a furious indictment of the structural cruelties that condemned the many to lives of indignity and despair. In his unvarnished rage, one feels the raw pulse of revolution, the breath of a Sweden that might, in another turn of fate, have traded compromise for catastrophe.

And then, there is Fogelström. Gentler, wistful, and imbued with a love that softens the harshness of his truths, his accounts of the working class are not merely chronicles of misery but testaments to their resilience, their quiet nobility, and their unyielding humanity. His is the voice of remembrance, painting the struggle not in anger but in tender hues, a poignant reminder that even in the depths of suffering, dignity can endure.

While Fogelström has received criticism for being too rosy in his depictions of the struggles of the proletariat, his contribution lies in revealing a simple truth: despite differences in financial means, all people, rich and poor, are fundamentally the same. The character of August embodies this philosophy. Through August, Fogelström dismantles the myth that wealth pertains to individual of certain pedigree, and demonstrates how those born poor, if given the right prerequisites, can be just as successful as those born rich, or even more so, and that modest origins do not necessarily jeopardise an acquired social standing. August, in many ways, epitomises the core values of liberalism: the triumph of individual merit over inherited privilege.  

Another observation of some interest, though perhaps of limited consequence, is Fogelström’s curious treatment of art and its devotees. In the book series thus far, two characters have dedicated themselves completely to art: Olof the painter and Stig the musician. Both men frail and sickly they seem destined for tragedy. Then there is Jenny, Olof’s widow, who occupies a different artistic sphere. An actress, she appears predominantly in vaudevilles, her success being in entertainment rather than art. Contrary to Olof and Stig, she is portrayed as robust, vigorous, and easy-going. Whether Fogelström by drawing this contrast between true art and commercial art intends to comment on the artists’ place in society, I leave to the discerning reader’s judgment.

“I en förvandlad stad” concludes with the Nazi capitulation of 1945 and the drop of the curtain on an era that will forever remain an indelible stain on the conscience of humanity. Fogelström meditates on the evil and destruction that mankind is capable of, and what is more more, on the indifference that we as a collective are capable of, whether it be in the role of obedient soldiers or passive onlookers. Stockholm, together with the rest of the world, stands on the doorstep to a new age.

METRO 2035

Author: Dmitry Glukhovsky
Year: 2018 (2015)
Publisher: Ersatz
Language: Swedish (Translator Ola Wallin) 

And so, the time has come to bring yet another book series for the year to a close; Dmitry Glukhovsky’s Metro-trilogy. The heroes of the first book “Metro 2033” (see review of Jun 2024) and “Metro 2034” (See review of August 2024) come together in the third and final volume, aptly named “Metro 2035”.

The story unfolds two years after the events of 2033 that had made Artyom Chorny an unlikely and involuntary hero. Two years later, he has sacrificed most of his hero status as well as his marriage, on the altar of his fixation with the idea that there may be survivors in places other than the Moscow metro. As an authorised ‘stalker’, that peculiar breed of soldier who braves the poisoned surface in search of relics and resources, he periodically ventures into the contaminated outdoors carrying his shortwave communication radio to try to pick up signals from the hypothetical pockets of other survivors, and to send messages of his own. Day after day, he sends his missives into the void, and day after day, he is met with the void’s majestic indifference. No signal answered, but then again, hope, like a stubborn weed, is resilient to reason. When one of the main characters from “Metro 2034” looks him up at his home station, Artyom’s life changes completely.

In this volume, Glukhovsky settles the final score with his creation. It is brutal, not merely in terms of violence, but also in terms of honesty and the most unsparing truth. He tears the curtain from the façade that sustains those huddled in the tunnels and reveals the unfathomable and ugly machinery of power whose gears grind relentlessly upon the backs of humanity. While Artyom’s exploits bring him closer to the truth, he finds that the price of revelation is nothing less than his sanity and that of his companions. In an almost melodramatic way, Glukhovsky lays bare the futility in humanity’s battle over ideologies and social trifles. He mocks the shallowness of fascism by demonstrating how easy it is for a fascist regime to shift the population’s hatred from one arbitrary target to the next. He ridicules mankind’s incurable irrationality and disdain for knowledge and reasoned thought. When shown a truth that would topple their cherished certainties, they flee from it as from the plague. When pressed to rise against their own suffering, they clutch their chains all the tighter. It is a ruthless indictment, a portrait of humanity painted with scathing accuracy and a certain tragic affection.

In short, Dmitry Glukhovsky sketches a most unflattering portrait of a species that will willingly choose destruction over construction and despair over hope. Artyom learns that people would rather cling to a familiar lie than extend a trembling hand toward an unsettling truth. For them, comfort lies not in enlightenment, but in the quiet, stubborn shadows of their accustomed illusions.

“Men are like handsome race horses who first bite the bit and later like it, and rearing under the saddle a while soon learn to enjoy displaying their harness and prance proudly beneath their trappings.” Etienne de la Boétie.

Taking a step back, one might observe that “Metro 2035” constitutes the philosophical battleground between Niccolo Machiavelli’s Prince and Etienne de la Boétie’s insubordinate subject. The ultimate ruler of the Metro-world, portrayed as some sort of solitary Bilderberg Group, is a decisively Machiavellian persona, operating through a carefully curated mixture of violence and the illusion of protection. Artyom, by contrast, emerges as the lone voice of candour, the innocent child daring to cry that the emperor is, in fact, naked.

Unfortunately, Glukhovsky’s analysis is neither novel nor particularly deep. To a reader with an advanced intellectual capacity, the book may serve as a reminder that the political landscape is more complex and the power structures of society more convoluted than meets the eye, but for such readers there is better literature to reach for. To the lesser thinker, the book may appear to confirm several existing conspiracy theories and lead to an even looser grip of reality.

Though, the Metro-series is written as a trilogy where both the setting in the Moscow metro system and the characters are recurring and refer to events in previous volumes, each book strikes a distinctly different note. In this final instalment, the political intrigue, which lent “Metro 2033” such gravity yet was conspicuously absent from “Metro 2034”, returns in full force. However, the murky, menacing threat of nameless mutants and shadowy beasts, which haunted the earlier volumes, has receded into the background, leaving the eerie atmosphere markedly diminished. This third instalment is possibly the most action-packed of the three, but that does not necessarily make it the best.

Before I embarked on this journey into the underground, a good friend of mine advised me to read the first book but forfeit the remaining two. I cannot say I did not enjoy Metro 2035, but still I sometimes think that maybe I should have listened.