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Carl-Henning Wijkmark was born in Stockholm in 1935 and studied at the universities of Stockholm and Lund. In the late 1960s, he taught at the State Library School and at Stockholm University. For long periods he lived in Germany and France, which influenced his writing.
In 1967 Carl-Henning Wijkmark made his fictional debut with “Jägarna på Karinhall”. The novel deals with violence and sexuality within Nazism and has been translated into several languages. The European theme is evident in several of his novels, for example in “Last Days”, which describes an assassination attempt on French President Charles de Gaulle. He is also the first Swedish author to appear on the French literature program “Apostrophes”.
Several of his novels have been translated and have drawn attention abroad. “The Black Wall” (2002) was well received by Swedish critics and DN, for example, called it “one of the truly important novels of the autumn”.
Carl-Henning Wijkmark was awarded in 2007 The August award for “The moment of the night.” The novel takes place in a hospital and describes the decay and suffering of the body. “A strangely heartwarming drama about the art of dying,” wrote the August Prize jury.
– It was an extremely big surprise, I really couldn’t have imagined it, Carl-Henning Wijkmark told DN in connection with the award ceremony in 2007.
As a translator, he has presented and attracted the attention of several European authors in Sweden, including Walter Benjamin and Friedrich Nietzsche.
Carl-Henning Wijkmark was awarded the August award for “Awesome Night” in 2007.
Photo: Jessica Gow / TT
Håkan Bravinger, literary director In Nordstedts, the author recalls completely in tune with the times, at the same time that he was fascinated by the past:
– He devoted himself to cultured and cultured literature, the so-called great European novel, but he approached it with a moderate humor that many probably missed. The existential and compassion are recurring themes in all her books and are well summarized in the latest novel “See you in the next dream.” Many describe it as science fiction, it is too, but it is above all a deeply existential drama about the search for one’s own identity.
– As a person, Carl-Henning was very kind to his editor and used to visit him. I have seen him described as a literary outsider and I think it is because he is a person of great integrity. He often worked quietly on his projects, but when it came time to make a book, it was a dream to work with him. He was a stylist who had full control over his tools and was very interested in the possibilities of the novel with internal and external monologues. He was fantastic to follow and the editor will miss him very much, says Håkan Bravinger.
Gabriella Håkansson belonged to the editorial team in the intellectual magazine Res Publica for a few years in the 90s, along with, among others, Carl-Henning Wijkmark.
– We got in touch and I became a big fan of your books. In fact, I always read “The Hunters of Karinhall” when I doubt my own ability and literature. He pioneered his way of mixing genres and breaking rules. At the time, they did not write serious literature that borrowed from detective stories, contained pornography, and took place during Nazism. It has meant a lot to me and it still does, says Gabriella Håkansson.
The text is updated.
