Narrative
Människan som skalv
Not translated into English
Christer Kihlman · 1971
Synopsis
A book subtitled “a book about the inessential”, in which the author speaks in his own name. He analyses at close range his alcoholism and what links it to his homosexuality and his marriage, without shrinking from shame, guilt, self-examination and self-contempt. He returns to a childhood in a liberal middle-class home, not very oppressive but without warmth, where he did not feel loved and where alcohol was viewed with indulgence, and he links his difficulties to the bigoted morality of society.
Context
The book appeared in 1971, the very year in which Finland decriminalised sexual relations between adult men, and caused a scandal. It introduced into the Swedish-language literature of Finland a prose of confession at once intimate and universal. Its 2012 reissue presents it as an early and weighty contribution to Nordic autofiction. In 2026, his daughter Nina Kihlman answered it with a book about the family that lived in its shadow. It appeared in Finnish under the title Ihminen joka järkkyi.
Who it is for
An autobiographical narrative of about two hundred pages, in Swedish, with no French translation; nothing one needs to know beforehand.
Prizes and reception
Regarded as his masterpiece and his best-known book; it gave him a leading place among the writers of confession in the Swedish language.