The Airportline: Observations

This Friday I watched a long interview in Swedish with, probably my favourite Swedish author, Jonas Hassen Khemiri. I understand that you not-Swedish people find his name as non-Swedish sounding as you are. But be calm, Sweden is no longer only a country of blond women with large breasts and white tennis players with hair bands. We also have writers that provoke and enhance the Swedish language with both creativity and bravery. Jonas Hassen Khemiri is maybe the best example of this trend, both his books Ett Öga Rött (One Eye Red in English) and Montecore – En Unik Tiger (Montecore in English) are both magnificent books which he has sold translation right to both the U.S and The Netherlands and Germany.

In this interview he claims that he sometimes is more concerned by fictional character than with real ones, and that he sometimes spends too much time with the fictional characters and not enough with real ones. I find this very interesting, a sort of productive escapism. And maybe it's something that is demanded from a great fiction writer, just as a business man needs to devote time to his work, so does a fiction writer with his/her characters. And maybe that's why I will never be as good as him, cause so far, I'm not willing to trade time with real people for time with my fictional character. Maybe I just need to come up with better characters, characters that I would like to spend time with...