THE OLD MAN AND THE SEA

Author: Ernest Hemingway
Year: 1975 (1952)
Publisher: Stiftelsen Litteraturfrämjandet
Language: Swedish (translator unknown)

”A man can be destroyed, but not defeated” is one of the most well-known quotes from what is arguably Ernest Hemingway’s most prominent novel, “Den gamle och havet” (“The Old Man and the Sea”) from 1952. In his inimitable minimalistic writing style, Hemingway manages to encapsulate the whole message of the novel in one potent sentence.

SPOILER ALERT

“Den gamle och havet” is a story about Santiago, an old fisherman well past his prime who has had a streak of really rotten luck not having caught a single fish for eighty-four days. His misfortunes have become the talk of the town, and the parents of his young helper and apprentice have even taken the boy away from him and allocated him to a boat that has proved to be more successful in recent times. The boy, deeply loyal to his mentor, keeps visiting Santiago and run errands for him but he cannot act against the will of his parents and therefore cannot sail with his aged friend.

Santiago knows that the gossip around town is that he has been cursed and even that he is finished as a fisherman, but he does not pay much attention to it. He is too old and experienced to believe in such nonsense. After all, he has been through this before. Rather than praying to God or performing magical rituals, he relies on his knowledge, experience, and patience.

On the eighty-fourth day of fishing without catch, like all days before it, Santiago sails out onto the Sargasso Sea in his small fishing-boat. Reading the signs of the sea and the animal life in and above it, he soon picks up the trail of what should be an attractive prize. When the fish bites his hook, the fight is on. Hour after hour, day after night after day, Santiago struggles with the largest fish that he has ever encountered and when it finally breaks the surface of the sea, Santiago’s assumption that it must be an enormous marlin is confirmed. This monstrosity is even bigger than Santiago’s boat. After finally having killed it, he ties it to the side of his vessel and turns the bow toward Havana, which during the prolonged tussle has disappeared below the horizon.

Alas, to kill the marlin, Santiago has to drive his harpoon through it, spilling its blood into the ocean. An ocean rife with all types of sharks. Soon enough, the first sharks begin to attack the carcass and Santiago attempts to fight them off. He uses his harpoon to kill the first ones. When one of them disappears with it lodged to its dead body, he ties his knife to one of the oars and continues the fight. When the knife breaks, he proceeds to hitting the feeding sharks over their heads with the rudder. Shark after shark annihilated or chased away, but not before taking a chunk of the marlin with it. When Santiago finally reaches the shores of his fishing village, all that remains of the once mighty fish is the head, the tail, and the spine to hold them together, meticulously cleaned of all meat.

It takes a great writer to make a story about a fishing trip, albeit one involving a remarkable catch, thrilling, touching, and thought-provoking at the same time, and Hemingway does just that. The protagonist’s fight against the forces of nature but also his musings about life, death, love, fate, and the meaning of identity and personal integrity are all interwoven into the fabric of the story in a way that it never loses pace. The reader never gets the feeling that the author pauses the chain of events for philosophy. It is all embedded in the progress of the plot. This short, simple, and linear novel without any elaborate subplots, interpersonal drama, despicable villains, betrayal, misunderstandings, money, sex, or violence is consequently laden with symbols. It is the universe captured in the meeting between a modest man in a tiny skiff and a fish.

No matter how important our personal challenges seem to us, on the vast ocean of life they are but insignificant trifles. The ocean is too great to be aware of every single fish in it, no matter how big, or every single man in a dinghy on it, no matter how determined.

“The ocean is very big and a skiff is small and hard to see.”

Santiago did not blame bad luck for his poor performance. Nor did he blame God, the weather, the fish, his boat, or his equipment. He certainly did not blame himself. He was old enough to know that any fisherman sometimes goes through a bad patch. He did not give up. He set out to sea like he had done every single one of the days prior to this one.

His epic battle with the fish goes on for two days. The old man’s endurance, experience, attention, and ingenuity are put to the test as never before. He is old and not as agile as he used to be. And he is alone. This is his fight. To each and every one of us, to Santiago as well as everyone else, that struggle is essential not for survival alone, but for the definition of who we are. We are, Hemingway seems to say, defined by our actions and choices more than by their outcomes. To choose to continue to live is to choose to continue to choose.

“- They beat me Manolin, he said. They truly beat me.
- He didn't beat you. Not the fish.”

Santiago’s marlin would have brought him a small fortune if he had been able to haul it back in one piece to the market. But he ended up not receiving even a dime. The man is destroyed but not defeated.

We learn one more thing in the very end of the story. While Santiago is recovering after the ordeal, two groups of people notice the remains of the fish by his boat. The first are his peers in the village. Those who looking at the carcass are able to assess and appreciate the old man’s achievement. The other is a group of tourists who mistake the animal for a shark and shrug it off as a mere curiosity. How often do you allow tourists to determine the value of your accomplishments and to put you down by the force of their numbers and ignorant confidence?

It is no mystery why “Den gamle och havet” has become a classic not only in American but in world literature, and Hemingway’s Nobel Prize and widespread renown are, in my view, very well motivated.

ANIARA

Author: Harry Martinson
Year: 1974 (1956)
Publisher: Bokförlaget Aldus
Language: Swedish

In a distant future where Earth has been laid to waste by pollution and war, a project of resettlement to Mars is underway. Scores of advanced interplanetary vessels navigate through the void transporting refugees from the once beautiful blue planet to its desolate red neighbour, which now, in comparison, despite its barren surface is more hospitable than Earth, or Doris as Earth is now known.

One of these vessels is the Aniara, carrying eight thousand souls. A carrier of hope embarking on a routine journey from chaos to order. Alas, shortly after Aniara leaves Earth’s atmosphere a wayward meteor forces her to veer from her plotted course and due to an irreparable malfunction, which renders the ship uncontrollable but otherwise undamaged, she drifts off helplessly into the cosmic dance of the stars. With her, the eight thousand captives encapsulated in the contourless fabric of eternity, trapped like “a little bubble in the glass of Godhead”.

As all hope evaporates, the denizens of Aniara form an earthly microcosm. A replica, or more accurately, an offshoot of society, with all the petty quarrels, personal ambition, sexuality, betrayal, and identity struggle that we recognise from our planet in our time. In their loss of direction, they turn to the ship’s computer, the Mima, for guidance and comfort. The Mima keeps record of all that ever happened on Doris and upon demand, shows the passengers bits and pieces of Doris, as it used to be. Seeing the long-lost beauty of their home planet gives the people a sense of security and belonging. In time, the humans begin to treat the Mima like a deity, including a cult complete with rituals and anniversaries, until one day, burdened with the anguish, regret, inadequacy, and wickedness of mankind, it exhibits the final destruction of Doris to the people on the ship who turn on it and demand it be switched off. The Mima, in a final decision of defiance, decides to incapacitate itself permanently to avoid being exposed to people ever again.

“There is protection from near everything,
from fire and damages by storm and frost,
oh, add whichever blows may come to mind.
But there is no protection from mankind.” Song 26

And thus abandoned they press on, aimlessly in the general direction of the Lyra constellation. The Lyra, the god Apollo’s sacred instrument, tuned to praise the Apollonian virtues of self-consciousness and moderation, while at the same time the society on Aniara is rife with denial and indulgence.

The author, Harry Martinson, one of Sweden’s most beloved 20^th century writers, captures the fate of the Aniara and the passengers incarcerated inside her gut, in the format of an epic poem. Across a total of 103 songs the fates of Aniara, but also some of the individuals that are doomed to live out their lives on her decks, are described in verse. The meter is indistinct, fleeting and free without boundaries or rules. Sometimes resting in an iambic blank verse only to eject into a perfectly free format which only briefly produces a rhythm or a rhyme as if to tease or test the reader. By making up words of his own, Martinson pushes the limits of poetry even further.

“The richest of the languages we know,
Xinombric, has three million words,
but then the galaxy you’re gazing into now
has more than ninety billion suns,
Has there ever been a brain that mastered all the words
in the Xinombric language?
Not a one.
Now you see.
And do not see.” Song 85

Martinson several times declared his distaste for Sartre’s iteration of existentialism and it could be argued that Aniara is an attempt to make a case in favour of absurdism as opposite to existentialism. While he seems to agree with the existentialist worldview that actions come from nothing, it is difficult to find traces of an end goal of the actions of the passengers on the tumbling spaceship. Man’s freedom, a key concept in Sartres theory of Bad Faith, is severely curtailed. All purpose eradicated. All meaning nullified. Options expunged. The most respected person on the uncontrollable Aniara is at the same time the most useless; Isagel the pilot. Even Isagel’s scientific discovery in Song 39, that would shift an entire scientific discipline, was ultimately pointless.

“[H]ere her breakthrough never could become
in any manner fruitful, just a theorem
which Isagel superbly formulated
but which was doomed to join us going out
ever farther to the Lyre and then to vanish.”   

In the end, what is the difference between Aniara and Earth? Are we not all trapped on a space vessel that is uncontrollably crashing through the galaxy due to no agency of our own on a journey whose destination none of us will live to arrive at. There is no difference between the yurg danced on Aniara and the yurg danced in Dorisburg. And so are we all dancing, loving, fighting, cheating, and toiling our way through the forever expanding futility that is the universe. There is no one to pilot our journey.

All quotes are from Martinson, H. (1998) Aniara: An Epic Science Fiction Poem. USA: Story Line Press.

 

 

IN DESERT AND WILDERNESS

Author: Henryk Sienkiewicz
Year: 1978 (1911)
Publisher: Panstwowy Instytut Wydawniczy
Language: Polish

It seems commonly to be so that writers of children’s books are moderately successful when targeting a mature audience, and writers of literature aimed at adults fail to capture the hearts of the young whenever they try their luck at stories for children. Many have tried. Scandinavian legends Astrid Lindgren and H C Andersen are two examples of the former. Oscar Wilde and Virginia Woolf two examples of the latter.

There are a few, however, who have managed to make their mark on literature for all age groups. Swedish Nobel Prize winner Selma Lagerlöf is one. German writer and journalist Peter Härtling is another. Polish epicist Henryk Sienkiewicz a third.

Although Sienkiewicz is best known for his historical epics such as “Quo Vadis” or “The Teutonic Knights”, he is equally appreciated for his young adult novel “W pustyni i w puszczy” (“In Desert and Wilderness”). Despite the fact that this was Sienkiewicz’s only attempt at writing for teenagers, the book has become a classic in Polish literature and generations of Polish students have read it before graduating from grammar school.

The plot is set in Africa during the height of the colonial era. Staś and Nel grow up together near the Suez Canal and are fourteen and eight years old respectively when the story begins. Staś is the son of a Polish engineer leading the construction of the canal and Nel is the daughter of one of the senior directors of the company running the project. The fathers, both widowers, have become great friends over the years and also taken each other’s children to their hearts.

The point in time is 1884, just about the siege of Khartoum during the Mahdist war in Sudan. Staś’s and Nel’s fathers are called away on business and promise to send for the children once they have established themselves in their new location. When they finally do, the servants tasked with bringing Staś and Nel to them betray them and carry the children off to revolutionist Mahdi instead. The young captives realise that if they want to survive, they will have to find a way to escape from their captors.

Staś, who in the beginning of the story appears both boastful and vain, instinctively takes on the role as Nel’s protector. He proves himself protective, loyal and resourceful and on several occasions risks his life in order to save Nel’s. Nel, on the other hand, despite her tender age keeps Staś in line and more than once stops him from making mistakes or taking unnecessary risks.

The novel is aimed for a young adult audience in its early teens and upward but it shows that it is written by a master of the epic proportion and colourful characters. It is beautifully written, full of life and rich in flavour. The sentences, although suitably simple, are carefully crafted and contain much of the powerful yet gentle language that Sienkiewicz was world famous for during his lifetime.

But it also shows that he did not find it mandatory to spend his otherwise trademark attention to detail and facts on children. For although the historical context of “W pustyni i w puszczy” is largely correct, and the geographical descriptions are mostly accurate, his depictions of people and animals are bordering on fantasy. Vindictive elephants, oversized dogs that successfully fight lions and hyenas, one-dimensional representations of the local population and almost ludicrous dialogue where natives can barely put together a sentence in one moment, use elaborate vocabulary in the next, are all caricatures of what I assume someone born in the end of the 19^th century might imagine Africa to be. It is hard to believe that Sienkiewicz actually spent time there before writing this book, but he did.

Particularly the Muslim antagonists are portrayed not only as cruel and single-minded, but at times almost intellectually challenged (I believe the word Sienkiewicz’s contemporaries would use is “imbecile”). Furthermore, the relationship between Staś, the decision-maker and protector, and Nel, the damsel in distress, is all too well-known, although Sienkiewicz avoids some of the fiercest criticism by introducing a significant age gap between them.  

Modern critics have rightly questioned whether “W pustyni i w puszczy” should remain on the school curriculum provided its inaccurate and essentially racist content. Seeing as the book is intended for adolescents, this question is valid. However, as a reasonably well-educated adult, one should be expected to be able to identify these as relics of a past worldview no longer supported by society, and enjoy the novel for its remaining qualities.

Qualities of which there are many. There is no doubt that Sienkiewicz was a sublime storyteller. His environmental descriptions are enchanting and the main characters relatable and likeable. The storyline is simple but engaging and the pace is steady, although I suspect that a teenager in the 21^st century might find it too slow. We need to accept that an elephant simply does not make the same impression on the tiktok-generation as it did on the pegtop-generation.  

SPOILER ALERT

There are three random observations from my side that were probably unintentional from Sienkiewicz’s side but were all too obvious to me as a 21^st century reader.

The first is that Staś’s and Nel’s fathers appear to be very close friends, to the point of creating a family together for their children. To be clear, there is absolutely no trace of any romantic feelings between them, but short of that, they would make a remarkable same-sex couple.

The second observation is that Staś’s servant, Kali, is repeatedly quoted still to this day as a symbol of primitive morality when he concludes that stealing a cow from Kali is a bad deed, whereas if Kali steals a cow from someone else, it is a good deed. What people who quote these lines from the book as a way to make fun of non-European cultures fail to remember, and which I did not know until reading the book, is that Staś when he heard Kali’s reasoning thinks to himself that it sounds very much like high level politics is done in Europe at the time. Sienkiewicz 1, racists 0.

The third observation is that Staś and Nel, after surviving the ordeals in Africa, return to Europe and do not get together again until they are adults. To my disappointment, in the epilogue, Sienkiewicz decides to wed them in holy matrimony which shakes my image of them as brother and sister and is completely unnecessary for the ending of the novel.

All in all, even though I mostly enjoyed “W pustyni i w puszczy” my recommendation to someone who is curious about Henryk Sienkiewicz would be to read “Quo Vadis”, and someone who is curious about old young adult novels with adventure in them to read “Treasure Island”.

THE SEVEN GOOD YEARS

Author: Etgar Keret
Year: 2018 (2015)
Publisher: Brombergs Förlag
Language: Swedish (translator Kristian Wikström)

In an earlier blog post, I compared some books to shiny pearls (see Convenience Store Woman from January 2023). This is how I think of books that appear leaner and less conspicuous than the bombastic classics that tower over the literary realm like mighty sphinxes, yet in all their unpretentious beauty and grace still offer the readers a sublime reading experience, gently ushering them into intellectual or emotional areas previously unexplored. Etgar Keret’s collection of short stories “De sju goda åren” (“The Seven Good Years”) is another such pearl. Across 36 short stories, most of which are only a few pages long, Keret picks out some nuggets from the time period between the moment his son Lev is born up until his father passes away seven years later.

Keret is a true Master of the short story format. Each text is a snapshot from reality to which he adds not only colour and context but moreover an additional dimension, a way of thinking and responding to the situations described in an innovative, analytical, and highly entertaining way. Some of his contemplations are deeply sensitive and personal. Others, laugh-out-loud hilarious bordering on the ridiculous.

Many of the themes are universal. The challenges of family, friendship, money, time, and a hot summer day are things we can all relate to. Other themes are specifically Jewish and provide peepholes into the world of a Jew, both in Israel and abroad, from a perspective that is rarely encountered in other literature, even that written by other Jews. Keret’s Jewish perspective is not that of a victim. It is that of an introspective observer studying his field from an emic point of view, starting with himself.   

In the very first text, his son is born, while all the medical staff at the hospital is scrambling to respond to a Palestinian missile attack. He comes into a world full of anger, conflict, hatred, and vindictiveness. In another, Keret examines domination techniques and phone salesmen, and how his own ability to see things from the perspective of others is abused by people for their own gains, as symbolised by the telemarketers. Year two opens with one of the funniest texts I have ready this year as Keret tries to be creative with how he dedicates his books during signing events. He also shares his experiences with a wealth manager on the Channel Islands, which certainly resonates with This Banker. In year three, he accounts for his participation in the Gothenburg book fair during a diplomatic row between Sweden and Israel. The fourth year begins with the threat of nuclear war between Israel and Iran and proceeds to discuss courtesy in a taxi as well as the challenges of seeing ones sister turn into a religious zealot. In year five, Keret discusses his identity as an Israeli of Polish heritage and what Warsaw, which is where his mother grew up and had to flee from, means for him and his understanding of himself in the world. He also dwells on his role as a writer and his decision to write. During the sixth year, Keret’s father is finally given his death sentence in the form of a cancer diagnosis. How Keret handles this is the theme until the end of the book. The seventh and final year is where Keret’s father passes away. The year ends with another missile attack on Israel. This time, his son is old enough to ask questions.  

Keret brilliantly finds way to tie two or three observations together into one unified reflection that draws on one experience to examine or explain another. It is almost as if he is capable of stopping the clock to show us a scene frozen in time, and reveal to us the vulnerability, imperfection, angst, and self-repression of the people in it and put it in the context of a carefully delimited cultural or historical superstructure.

Etgar Keret may not be a journalist and he is certainly no philosopher, but he is an observer and a highly intelligent thinker, and he is very acutely aware of his surroundings. This together with his sense of humour and charm will render most readers defenceless. While every short story is a gem, the collection as such is a well-filled pouch of precious pearls. He will not win the Nobel Prize for his writing, but he will win many hearts.   

 

THE SEAGULL & UNCLE VANYA

Author: Anton Chekhov
Year: 1967 (1896 & 1897)
Publisher: Gebers Förlag AB
Language: Swedish (translator Jarl Hemmer)

A dead seagull at the feet of a confused young actress. Shot out of boredom and spite. Red blood seeping from its still heart onto its snow-white plumage. Its eyes wide open reveal nothing. Maybe because there is nothing to reveal. A receptacle devoid of content. A body without spirit.

This is the scene in Anton Chekhov’s play “Måsen” (“The Seagull”) where the shooter, Konstantin, and the young actress Nina go their separate ways after a short romance. He is passionate about the future. She is in love with the past. They can never truly know each other. He goes on to become a celebrated playwright of avantgarde drama, she is seduced by an elderly writer past his prime and gives birth to his child before being abandoned and shamed. “Måsen” is a play about the new challenging the old but also about humility challenging pride. Chekhov wants to show us how hard it is to create beauty and how easily it is ruined.

The second play in this short volume is “Onkel Vanja” (“Uncle Vanya”), another one of Chekhov’s most famous works. The mansion inhabited by professor Serebryakov and his young second wife along with his deceased first wife’s mother, brother (Vanya) and niece, is the ideal setting for a perfect storm. All the disappointment, disenchantment, and grievance on the side of Vanya toward his brother-in-law, whom he once revered, is like a powder keg about to explode. Vanya came many years earlier to the mansion to help his sister and her husband run it while the latter was still alive and the former was busy with his research. After her passing, Vanya stayed on and continued to run the estate, growing increasingly dissatisfied with his mission.

Anton Chekhov’s greatness is in his skilful construction of the dialogue as a way of developing his characters and the relationship between them. Whereas the engine in many playwrights’ works before his is a misunderstanding (comedies) or deceit (tragedies), the force that propels Chekhov’s plays is the impossible reconciliation of individual desire and ambition. Every person on stage is essential to the plot and to the message that Chekhov is trying to convey. No villain is necessary in either “Måsen” or “Onkel Vanja”. Fate and society are quite enough.  

Chekhov’s importance to the modernist revolution in late 19^th century modernist theatre can hardly be overstated and the school he established spread across Europe and the British Isles. Most famously, George Bernard Shaw implicitly dedicated his play “Heartbreak House” to Chekhov by the subtitle “A Fantasy in the Russian manner on English Themes”. It probably also widely known that Chekhov repeatedly argued about the minimalist storytelling technique where everything that is placed on stage needs to serve a purpose: known as Chekhov’s gun. If a gun is shown in the first act, the principle goes, it needs to go off before the end of the last, alternatively, if it does not go off, that in itself must be a significant turn of events in the plot.

Reading plays is in many respects different from reading novels. There is no narrator, descriptions are scant, and the setting implicit. All there is, essentially, is the dialogue. Exclusively external. When one reads a stage play, one must try to imagine the emotions, the gestures, the voices, deducing it all from the lines and the context. The work is intended to be performed, not read. This transfers the burden from the director and the actors to the reader. Often with poor results.

Although, I have never seen a play by Chekhov performed live on stage, after having read “Måsen” and “Onkel Vanja”, I am confident that the experience of these works would be ten times more potent had I enjoyed it from the stand at a theatre. Knowing what a play is about is one thing. Feeling it something altogether different.  

 

 

 

 

VIOLINS

Author: Anne Nilsson
Year: 1981
Publisher: ICA Bokförlag
Language: Swedish 

How much do you know about violins? Probably a lot less than you think. Even if you play the instrument, you may not have contemplated its history, handicraft, usage, or the physics of its composition. It may seem like violins have always looked and sounded the same, an yet a continuous development over time is taking place and instruments find different roles to play in different eras.

Anne Nilsson is a journalist and writer who has written books on a broad variety of topics since her debut in 1975. Not being an expert in any particular field, in an interview she said that the best way to become an author is to find a topic that you are passionate about and as you read up on it, you will notice what is missing in the literature available at the time. Then simply get to work and fill the void.

In her book “Fioler” (not available in English but the translation is “Violins”) Nilsson does just that. The angle on violins that was missing to her, appears to be an accessible and comprehensive overview of the instrument aimed at the non-professional general public. It is clear from the first paragraph that the book has not been written by a specialist but by an enthusiast. Not only does the writer say so in the book, but the structure, the language, and the depth at which Nilsson is capable of gauging her chosen topic all point to the same conclusion.

“Fioler” begins with a short overview of what violins are used for and all the genres of music that they can be applied to. This already shows that the book is intended for a novice audience.

The next chapter is about the history of string instruments in general and violins in particular. This is the most interesting part of the book and although it is a bit patchy and incoherent, it is a stimulating experience to dive into the past and learn about the evolution of the instruments but also the music that the instruments were supposed to play. Nilsson reaches for examples from all around Europe as she takes us back to early medieval times. As I am also a dabbler in music, the scope and depth of Nilsson’s survey is perfectly aligned with my needs and abilities.

The chapter after this is dedicated to the many violinmakers in history who have made their mark on the evolution of the instrument. A special section is devoted to Swedish artisans who on a global level made no lasting impression on the violinmaking industry but served an important role in supplying decent instruments to Swedish musicians over the centuries thus providing them with the necessary means to adopt musical influences from other parts of Europe as well as producing a rich tradition of folk music which in Sweden to a large extent dependends on the violin. Since the book was printed in 1981, the last few Swedish violinmakers mentioned were still active at that time but probably are no longer. By the same token, the violinmakers that picked up the baton after them and are active in Stockholm today, such as Sebastian Skarp, Joakim Amundin, and Philippe Dormond among others could not possibly be mentioned back then.

Nilsson rounds off her book with an uneven and sketchy but, again, for a dilettante adequate chapter on the construction of a violin; both in terms of its different parts and in terms of the techniques used to put the parts together.  You will not be able to build an instrument from the instructions given in “Fioler” which makes some of the details superfluous. The feeling I got away with was that the author ought to have either included a detailed step-by-step instruction on how to construct a violin, or leave some of the details out and focused on a general understanding of the building process. As it is now, the image of an enthusiast from the first pages is exacerbated as it is obvious that Nilsson simply put every piece of information that she could find into her book, whether useful or not.

All in all, “Fioler” is a gratifying read for the curious beginners but I suspect that a professional violinmaker or historian of music would probably scoff at it, likely forgetting that they are by no means the intended audience.

 

THE NARNIA CHRONICLES

Author: C. S. Lewis
Year: 2013 (1950-1956)
Publisher: Bonnier Carlsen
Language: Swedish (translator Birgitta Hammar)

Clive Staples Lewis’s ”Berättelsen om Narnia” (”The Narnia Chronicles”) undoubtedly ranks among the undisputed classics in children literature in general and high fantasy in particular.  Its innovative world-building and wide catalogue of characters have enthused generations of young boys and girls through all kinds of media forms, such as television, radio, the silver screen, and the stage, to say nothing of the books themselves. My own first encounter with Narnia in my childhood was the 1979 animated tv-adaptation by CBS and I was flabbergasted. The mere thought of a child becoming a hero and a king was new to me.

The series consists of seven books published between 1950 and 1956. It tells the story of a world, Narnia, that is in every way superior to ours. Here, the colours are brighter, flavours stronger, fruit juicier, and air fresher. It is populated by talking animals and mythological creatures such as minotaurs, giants, and fauns. Most of the seven books begin with the main human protagonists teleporting from our own world to Narnia, be it by the help of magic rings, a gateway inside a wardrobe, or by being summoned by a higher will. Usually, they arrive at a time of crisis and are destined to help the denizens of Narnia restore order, peace, and prosperity. All the time, they are supervised by the almighty lion Aslan; the creator of worlds.

Although the protagonists change over time, they have some traits in common: they are all children, they are more or less loosely connected to one another in our world by kinship or acquaintance, and they have no super powers. Furthermore, they all improve to become better versions of themselves as a result of their experiences in Narnia.

Lewis did not write the books in the chronological order of events and still today there is a dispute among scholars and fans alike, in what order to read them. Lewis’s own communication during his lifetime gives little guidance and it has turned out that whatever order you place the books, there will be inconsistencies and logical gaps. Lewis, in a letter, confesses that the series was by no means planned and that each novel came to him on its own merits. Consequently, the order in which the books were written does not correspond to the order in which they were published, which in turn does not correspond to the order in which the events in Narnia unfold. My edition is based on the HarperCollins enumeration which orders the entries in the chronological order the events play out.

1.      The Magician’s Nephew; the penultimate book to be written tells the story of how Narnia came to be, and why there is a street light in the middle of the Narnian forest.

2.      The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe; the first book to be written and published and introduces the main characters, the children Peter, Susan, Edmund, and Lucy who will become the most legendary kings and queens in the history of Narnia.

3.      The Horse and His Boy; the first entry where humans native to Narnia appear and where the children from our world play a secondary role.

4.      Prince Caspian; 1300 years have passed in Narnia since the rule of Peter, Susan, Edmund, and Lucy although only one year has elapsed in Britain. The children are summoned to restore order in their former kingdom and protect the rightful ruler and heir to their throne.  

5.      The Voyage of the ‘Dawn Treader’; Prince Caspian, Edmund, and Lucy along with their unbearable cousin Eustace embark on an epic journey on the high seas far beyond the known waters of Narnia to find the legendary lands of the Lion.

6.      The Silver Chair; Eustace and his friend Jill are saved from some bullies at their school by being whisked away to Narnia and tasked with rescuing a prince who has been taken captive by an evil witch.

7.      The Last Battle; the final demise of Narnia and the end of time in that world and, in a sense, ours.  

Lewis was already an established writer by the time he penned The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe and it is therefore surprising how poorly written the books actually are. Particularly The Magician’s Nephew is a disappointment. Whilst it must be conceded that the merit of these tomes as a monumental piece of children fiction is beyond dispute, the same cannot be said of the internal consistency and coherence of the narrative. One example of inconsistent world-building is the depiction of magic and its limitations in Narnia. In some books, magic is portrayed as a powerful force with few limits, capable of achieving almost anything the user desires. In others, however, magic is portrayed as having more limitations and requiring specific knowledge or tools to work. This inconsistency can be jarring and can lead to confusion about the nature and limits of magic in the Narnia universe.

Furthermore, there are inconsistencies in the depiction of the geography and culture of Narnia. In some books, Narnia is portrayed as a small, isolated kingdom, while in others it is depicted as a sprawling empire with a rich and diverse culture. Similarly, the cultures and religions of Narnia are sometimes portrayed in a respectful and nuanced way, while at other times they are reduced to stereotypical caricatures. These inconsistencies can be distracting and can undermine the reader's immersion in the world of Narnia. In fact, Lewis found himself forced to write an entire prequel, The Magician’s Nephew, just to explain why there was a street light in the middle of the Narnian forest in the first place as in The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, after this question had been raised by one of his friends.

The writer’s Christian beliefs also shine through even though he himself denied any intentional allegorical similarities between Narnia and Christianity. Nevertheless, it would require a particular quality of blindness not to see the affinity between Aslan the Lion, the creator and redeemer of Narnia and Christ, or for that matter between King Peter the Magnificent and Saint Peter, or indeed Eustace and Edmund and every self-absorbed sinner reborn by the grace of our Saviour. The Christian social fabric is also reproduced by the fixed social classes where kings are kings and servants are servants by a divine decision and cannot be changed. This feudal class system is neither questioned nor challenged in Narnia and even the creatures on the lowest steps of the social ladder are depicted as happy with their fate.

The characters, though charming and endearing in their own right, also suffer from a lack of depth and complexity. Instead of developing his protagonists, it seems Lewis simply exchanged them for new ones from time to time for variation. Their actions are often dictated by plot convenience rather than organic development, leaving the reader with a sense of superficiality and predictability. A particularly distracting example is Susan’s rejection of Narnia, mentioned only in passing in the last book, in favour or fancy clothes, make-up, and boys, which is completely out of character for the sensitive, caring, and soft-spoken girl she had been until then, known to the Narnians as Queen Susan the Gentle, of whom it is not easy to believe possible a transformation to such shallow ignorance and egotism. My guess is that Lewis, watching his niece grow up, wanted to send her the message to remain more like the character Lucy and not fall for materialism and teenage vanity.

For Lewis’s niece, when all is said and done, is the key to “Berättelsen om Narnia”. The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe was dedicated to her and if there is one unmistakeable element that characterises the entire series it is Lewis’s love for this girl. He sometimes addresses her directly, sometimes through allegory, but always with a moving tenderness and devotion, and it is apparent that the character Lucy, the most Narnian of all the children from our world and Lewis’s niece’s namesake, is modelled on her.

Despite these remarkable weaknesses, I found “Berättelsen om Narnia” increasingly enjoyable as I progressed through the series and toward the end of it, I could barely wait to get into the next adventure. Although, nowadays there is a sea of children’s literature out there that is both more up-to-date and more relevant to a modern audience, I cannot help but wishing the kids of today the same experience I had when I first became acquainted with Aslan, Lucy, Mr Tumnus and the White Witch. Not to mention the sublime flavours of high-quality Turkish delight.