Description
Author(s): Boye, Karin
Leo Kall is a zealous, middle-ranking scientist in the totalitarian World State who has just made a thrilling discovery- a new drug, Kallocain, that will force anyone who takes it to tell the truth. At last, criminality will be dragged out into the open and private thought can finally be outlawed. But can the World State be trusted with Kallocain? For that matter - can Kall himself be trusted ?
Written as the terrible events of the Second World War were unfolding, Karin Boye's classic dystopian novel speaks more clearly than ever of the dangers of acquiescence, and the power of resistance, no matter how futile.
About the author:
Karin Boye (1900-41), born in Sweden, was a poet and anti-Fascist who translated The Waste Land into Swedish. After undergoing psychoanalysis in Berlin, she left her husband and formed a lifelong relationship with another woman, Margot Hanel. Her most famous book, Kallocain (1940), was partly inspired by eye-opening trips to Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia. Boye committed suicide the year after writing the novel.
David McDuff's translations for Penguin Classics include Dostoyevsky's Crime and Punishment, The Brothers Karamazov and The Idiot, and Babel's short stories.
Product Details
ISBN-13: 9780241355589
Audience: General/trade
Language: English
Number of Pages: 192
Publication Date: 20191203
Publisher: Penguin UK
Product Form: Paperback / softback
Dimensions (LxWxH): 196 mm129 mm15 mm
Weight: 148 gr