“The End of History” by Jan Guillou

REVIEW. So this was it. End of Jan Guillous long way. Or yes, I really don’t know, but at the same time that SVT emits a documentary that summarizes the life of the man, the last part of his series of educational novels “The great century” is published. It seems like a lifetime’s work is being completed, an account is being taken, a sort of conclusion if a great Swede is presented to the nation.

“The end of history” is a well chosen title, worthy of the superior Guillou. Now he and the Lauritzen family are going to the goal. And of course I can’t think of another word, it starts with an old Nazi for the word.

He is back in Sweden after many decades of escaping justice in Argentina. Death is coming and he has matters to clear up. With eyes of approval, he sees a country that is about to change. Now it is finally the 90s. The New Democracy fools have been elected to the Riksdag, the browns of Sweden’s Democrats are starting to make headlines in the streets of the newspapers, Lasermannen is sweeping. Although liberal fortune-tellers claim that history has come to an end, the future moves in the shadows. But your case has nothing to do with it.

It is as clumsy as it is efficient.

Harald Lauritzen is the name of the old Nazi, a relatively close relative of the hero of the novel Eric Letang, Guillou’s super-lawyer, left-wing fighter, and literary alter ego. And with him to Sweden, he has a lucrative proposal. It can show that the wealthy Lauritzen family owned attractive neighborhoods in Berlin and Dresden until the end of World War II, which can now bring them a considerable amount of money, a kind of damage that the new Germany has regulated by law. The family rejoiced at the news. They don’t care so much about their uncle’s Nazism, it bothers them of course, but money speaks the language of money, not ideology. The billions are disturbing. Eric Letang files a lawsuit.

This completely uninteresting, if not harmless story is the core of the novel. More exciting things are happening around him, especially at the level of detail, where Guillou has a look that is rare: educators are almost always journalists, they know that a special truth about the world and time can be hidden in a Lindström steak. with frozen Greenland shrimp for starters.

And just like before in the series, the novel’s characters, especially left-wing lawyer Eric Letang and his Social Democrat wife Katarina, live magnificent lives, immersed in all things revolutionary. Their everyday lives are bourgeois problems: good wine, expensive food, cheeky travels, and great politics. One moment you sit on the couch in a white burgundy and watch ice hockey (the kids are NHL pros), the next you go out to the library, grab a red burgundy and stage a hit against that damn sauce on the right. Mona sahlin.

It is as clumsy as it is efficient. Through its great protagonists, Guillou narrates the small and the great, everyday life and the world, legal scandals and economic crises, in accordance with what is the true purpose of the novel series: a great socialist enlightenment of the story of the 20th century, with some self-glorifying distortions, told in ways that fool people who would otherwise never read a novel to hold on to every word. Such a project should not be underestimated, even if it is underrated and stereotyped. Guillou knows what he’s doing: “The End of History” is, of course, mainly about the death of the Social Democrats.

Not only parliamentary, when Göran Persson and Mona Sahlin gains power over the party, but also morally and spiritually. The lucrative gesture of reconciliation by the obscure Nazi Harald is Guillou’s not-so-subtle way of showing how the logic of capital ultimately triumphs over ethics and politics. A new era begins, and the great utopian projects of the 20th century, solidarity with humanity represented by Guillou’s heroes, are buried. Now wait for something darker.

We started again. We do not give up.

And even if I write this as a representative of the true antagonist of the novel series: Expressen, “the most abominable newspaper in the country,” something you can’t even hold onto without a shit, the greatest torment of the novel’s characters. , far more cruel than the comparatively deeply human Nazi. Harald – I want to praise Guillou.

His series of novels is a kind of politics for the people, a total, almost total way of looking at the world and judging it. Communication, ideology, entertainment; Literature that refuses to be fine, fine and French, to use Guillou’s terminology, but without sacrificing ambitions and pretensions. And that is precisely why “The Great Century” becomes a significant and distinctive addition to Swedish literature. I say this as a true compliment.

Dear Jan, I know I’m writing this from enemy territory, but still. Shall we not take and bury the axes? It’s over now, the whole thing. The story is over. We had a beer and let old wooden trees die. We started again. We do not give up.

Victor Malm is critic and editor of Expressen’s culture page.