Karin Boye
Paperback | Pages: 193 pages Rating: 3.8 | 5676 Users | 331 Reviews
Details About Books Kallocain
| Title | : | Kallocain |
| Author | : | Karin Boye |
| Book Format | : | Paperback |
| Book Edition | : | Special Edition |
| Pages | : | Pages: 193 pages |
| Published | : | April 2nd 2002 by University of Wisconsin Press (first published 1940) |
| Categories | : | Classics. Science Fiction. Dystopia. Fiction. European Literature. Swedish Literature |
Interpretation In Pursuance Of Books Kallocain
This is a novel of the future, profoundly sinister in its vision of a drab terror. Ironic and detached, the author shows us the totalitarian World-state through the eyes of a product of that state, scientist Leo Kall. Kall has invented a drug, kallocain, which denies the privacy of thought and is the final step towards the transmutation of the individual human being into a "happy, healthy cell in the state organism." For, says Leo, "from thoughts and feelings, words and actions are born. How then could these thoughts and feelings belong to the individual? Doesn't the whole fellow-soldier belong to the state? To whom should his thoughts and feelings belong then, if not to the state?"As the first-person record of Leo Kall, scientist, fellow-soldier too late disillusioned to undo his previous actions, Kallocain achieves a chilling power and veracity that place it among the finest novels to emerge from the strife-torn Europe of the twentieth century.
Specify Books During Kallocain
| Original Title: | Kallocain |
| ISBN: | 0299038947 (ISBN13: 9780299038946) |
| Edition Language: | English |
| Characters: | Leo Kall |
| Literary Awards: | Retro Hugo Award Nominee for Best Novel (2016) |
Rating About Books Kallocain
Ratings: 3.8 From 5676 Users | 331 ReviewsNotice About Books Kallocain
Amazing! I would put this book on a level with Brave New World and 1984. May be, it's not that well-known because it was easier for a Swedish author to win the Nobel prize than to become popular worldwide. At least until writing Swedish thrillers became a guarantee for popularity. But seriously, the suicide of the author shortly after its release and being published during WW II probably caused the slide into oblivion.Kallocain is a dystopia. The Earth is divided into two totalitarian statesSo this is a philosophical dystopia kinda half-way between We and 1984. Maybe a little of the dryness of Meccania, the Super-State. Its main character is a strange sort of combination of the protagonists of We and 1984, in that like the guy from We he's quite happy as part of a dystopia but also like Winston Smith he's terrified of everything. This cognitive dissonance is just one of the confused or complex elements of the story. Its quite a complicated tale and maybe a little is being lost in
Political dystopias found their form in the first half of the 20th century, with books like Zamyatin's We, Huxley's Brave New World and Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four as the big three. Karin Boye's Kallocain (1940) deserves to be mentioned in the same context. It's certainly at least as good, and its central message - that fear, hatred and paranoia demands a conscious effort, which cannot be sustained forever - certainly more hopeful, as bleak as the novel and its author's untimely end is.The
This poetic and moving novel deserves to be remembered in the same breath as We, 1984, Brave New World, and other great twentieth-century dystopias. Leo Kall is a scientist who employs chemistry in the service of the oppressive Worldstate. He develops kallocain, a drug that exposes the private thoughts of his fellow-soldiers, thus paving the way for the Worldstate to ensure that either each individual becomes a "happy, healthy cell in the state organism" or he/she is eliminated. To quote Leo's
4.5Actually even scarier than 1984.
I don't know how famous Kallocain or Karin Boye are outside Sweden, but she's pretty much one of our most renowned authors. I actually read this book back in 2007, but today at the flea market I just so happened upon a FREAKIN' ORIGINAL COPY FROM 1940 AND BOUGHT IT FOR FIVE FREAKIN' CROWNS! IT'S AMAZING AND SO FRAGILE AND THE PAGES A BLOODY HAND-CUT AND I LOVE IIIT!*Ahem*Excuse me for that.So anyway! Kallocain is a dystopian part-scifi about the chemist Leo Kall, who invents the first ever
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