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Lost childhoods in 1970s Sweden
Conversing with Thomas Kanger |
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| 08/12/2011 |
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Thomas Kanger is proof that noir writers increasingly draw upon reality, as is his 2002 documentary on the physical and mental abuses that children were subject to, from 1955 to 1975, in so-called “children’s home.” His work sparked a national investigation that uncovered a traumatic situation, had an impact worldwide and ended just a few weeks ago. His debut in noir writing also comes from a real-life event.
“I was working as a journalist,” Kanger told audiences in his Conversation at the Jardin de l’Ange, “and I had a story in my hand that was un-publishable. My source had forbid me from recounting what he had told me. I thought the best way to render what I knew public was to invent a fictional story, and the crime fiction genre was most suited to the story. Creating Elina Wiik [the policewoman and serial character from all his novels] comes from my not wanting to write about a typical, 50-something detective who’s losing his hair and has problems with women. I didn’t want a character that somehow resembled me!”
The Sunday Man is a new adventure for Elina, a cold case on the murder of a woman that took place 25 years ago, and the disappearance of her little girl, who like the children of the “children's homes” was also deprived of her innocence in childhood. Explains Kanger: “In Sweden, even homicide cases were prescribed in 25 years, now it’s a little different. The book is a race against time, there are only 28 days to solve the case. After that, the killer will be free.”
Born in Sweden in 1951, a journalist with a globe-trotting life behind him, Kanger has not stopped examining real-life issues. “In my books I try to understand the reasons that could lead a man to become a murderer. Except for a few examples, Scandinavian novelists never present the criminal as if he were absolute evil. I try to understand what would push a normal person to murder. I’m interested in investigating how people change the world and, above all, how the world changes people. In Sweden, 70% of murders are committed by friends or relatives of the victims. I focus on the other 30%, on the more complicated cases. And I think these cases will multiply in the years to come. We’re going through a period of great economic crisis in Sweden. People who are 50-55 years old have lost their jobs and they know full well that they won’t be able to return to the market. It’s not hard to imagine that all these people will find refuge for their anger in alcohol and violence.
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