Kalokin

Calukin is a dystopian novel that delves into the details of an imagined future country called "The Global State"; it is a police state that controls the minutest details of an individual's life and their relationships with those around them, even their relationship with their wife and children. And in an obsession with control and domination, a chemist loyal to the state—though doubts sometimes wrestle within him—discovers a light green drug that can make the accused confess all their kept secrets and moments they would never have dared to reveal publicly. Boy wrote the novel in the voice of the chemist Leo Cal; the name of the discovered drug and the title of the novel come from his name. He narrates it in the form of diaries he devoted himself to compiling while in captivity. Then, surprises and events unfold in the novel—diaries. And there is a thin thread of horror that pervades the events without us seeing a crime committed or a drop of blood spilled. There is no doubt that the historical projections, even the contemporary ones that could suit our time, burst forth like a water spring between pages. Calukin, as a dystopian work, preceded George Orwell’s "1984" by a few years. We present it here to Arabic readers for the first time despite nearly eighty years passing since it was written. Karin Boye was a Swedish poet born in Gothenburg in 1900. She began writing poetry at the age of ten. Her novel "Calukin" was published in 1940. On April 23, 1941, Karin Boye was found dead in the Swedish countryside under circumstances believed to be a suicide. At that time, World War II had firmly taken hold of the fabric of life in Europe and the world.