Kallocain: Karin Boye

A pioneering work of dystopian fiction from one of Sweden`s most acclaimed writers

Written midway between Brave New World and Nineteen Eighty-Four, as the terrible events of the Second World War were unfolding, Kallocain depicts a totalitarian `World State` which seeks to crush the individual entirely. In this desolate, paranoid landscape of `police eyes` and `police ears`, the obedient citizen and middle-ranking scientist Leo Kall discovers a drug that will force anyone who takes it to tell the truth. But can private thought really be obliterated? Karin Boye`s chilling novel of creeping alienation shows the dangers of acquiescence and the power of resistance, no matter how futile.