Kallocain by Karin Boye – Book Review

 

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Publisher’s write-up:

‘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?’

Kallocain is a dystopian novel written by the Swedish author Karin Boye during the interwar period. The novel is set in a dystopian future where there is a form of a large world government translated in English as ‘World State’; in some ways modelled around the Soviet Union. The author wrote this in the 1930s, when the ideological battle was raging between market-driven individualist model of US and the Soviet collective model and the author presents this world.

The lead character is Leo Kall, a scientist who works for the army of the world state and is a fervent patriot and is convinced that all traitors are to be ‘removed’ from the state. He invents a serum, when injected, forces the person to speak the truth and reveal all their ideas against the state. He names the chemical after himself, as ‘Kallocain’. However, he is also a very insecure character, who is convinced that his wife is in love with his boss Rissen and somehow wants the truth out of her which leads to a lot of problems which forms the crux of the novel.

For me, this novel did not work; and felt that the world that the author had created was too disconnected from reality. I would have been more interested to know how this ‘world state’ operated, but most of the story took place in an interrogation room where Leo administered Kallocain to the wives of soldiers to get information on them. There was no indication on what the event was that led to this consolidation – or any talk on general things that happen every day, such as what the weather was, what was the landscape around, what was it that the people were doing for entertainment (even if it meant watching state propaganda shows), etc.

I felt the story had an interesting idea, especially given the historic context at that time, with certain countries going towards a planned economy and collective society; that the author imagined a dystopian version of that. However, at some point, she was confused between building her world and exploring the insecurities of Leo, and in the end, there was neither.  It is not a long read, however, was a very difficult read for me.

Science-fiction or dystopian novels are not my preferred genre but I felt I gave it a fair chance and for a reader like me, it could have worked more if she had chosen on a particular theme and having the other as a sub-plot that try to equally focus on both. On that note, I award the novel a rating of three on ten.

Rating – 3/10

Have a nice day,
Andy