Next night: Karl-Henning Wickemark

Next night Karl-Henning Wijkmark Number of pages: 174 Year of publication: 2024 Name of the translator: Ibrahim Abdul Malik I never felt loneliness to the point of despair as I did at that moment. The forest, which had just been peaceful, became a kingdom of death. A northern kingdom of death, that is the feeling I had. The bare trunks, the gray light, the barren plant. Silent as before, but it was a different kind of silence. *** Karl-Henning Wijkmark (1934-2020): the Swedish novelist and thinker who became more famous outside Sweden than within it. He studied philosophy and worked as a university professor before embarking in the late fifties of the last century on his literary project, which ranged between translation, novel, critique, and theater. Swedish cultural circles saw him as embodying the idea of "the outsider," visions and influence, despite the recognition his works received from critics. This novel of his won the August Prize, the most important local award in Sweden, as the best literary book of 2007. It is a story about the end of life and a reflection on the ultimate questions, through which Hassa, the narrator of the events of the novel and the main character, clears accounts with his past, with all that he missed in it, disappointments, and accusations, even the moment that brought him together with three men sharing the same fate in Hall 5, or "the cell for those condemned to death," in one of Stockholm’s hospitals: a stranger from the ends of the earth, hidden from sight; Buryah, the gambler who bets on eternal life; and Harry, the homeless wanderer, the only one among the patients and healthy people there who, in a decisive moment, was characterized by nobility. The four face an inevitable, overwhelming enemy, but each of them has a trick he prepares for that confrontation.