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Jan Guillou (b. 1944) |
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Swedish journalist and writer, who has gained international fame
with his spy novels. Jan Guillou's hero, count Carl Gustaf Gilbert
Hamilton alias agent Coq Rouge, the Nordic James Bond, appeared in
a series of books which have sold over four million copies (until
1998). Coq Rouge's adventures have also been made into films. Guillou's
ambitious Det stora århundradet (The Great Century), a history of the
20th century, started with the novel The Bridge Builders (2011). "Samuel Ulfsson had a hard time making up his mind about Commander Hamilton. It was hard not to worry about the contrast between, on the one hand, the young man as polite and well trained as a flag cadet, calm and systematic, with all his weird computer lists in the right place at the right time—and, on the other, the extraordinary specially trained saboteur and assassin, who—through a play of circumstances and undoubtedly his own initiative—had knocked off a professional Israeli assassination commando, exterminated a West German terrorist organization, averted a hijacking, and led Operation Big Red to something which, expressed in old-fashioned terms, might be called the biggest Swedish military victory against Russia since the Battle of Narva in 1700." (Enemy's Enemy by Jan Guillou, translated from the Swedish by Thomas Keeland, New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1992, p. 31; originally published in Sweden as Fiendens fiende by Norstedts Förlag, Stockholm, 1989) Jan Oscar Sverre Lucien Henri Guillou was born in Södertälje, the
son of Charles Guillou (b. 1922), of French origin, and Marianne
Guillou (née
Botolfsen, 1922-2013), whose family came from Norway. After his parents
divorced,
his mother remarried and his father moved to Helsinki, Finland, where
Guillou's grandfather worked at the French Embassy. Guillou grew up
in Saltsjöbaden and Näsbypark. He was expelled from Vasa Real in
Stockholm and from the Solbacka boarding school in Södermanland,
eventually graduating in 1964 from the boarding school
Viggbyholmsskolan. Before becoming a journalist at FiB/Aktuellt in 1966, Guillou studied law two years. During the 1960s, Guillou had contacts with KGB. The newspaper Expressen claimed in 2009 that he was actually a KGB informer. Guillou himself has said, that he tried to investigate how the Soviet intelligence service operated in Sweden. Upon publishing in 1973 for Folket i Bild/Kulturfront an article about Sweden's Intelligence service IB and its illegal political personal register kept by Social Democratic bureaucrats, Guillou and his colleague Peter Bratt were accused of espionage and condemned to prison for ten months. The verdict made Guillou a hero of the freedom of the press. IB was suppressed a few years later but during this period Guillou started to develop his idea of the Hamilton series, although the first novel, Coq Rouge, came out ten years later in 1986. Guillou began his career as a writer in the 1970s, publishing novels and non-fiction. His first book, Om kriget kommer (1971), dealt with the Six Day War between Israel and its Arab neighbors. The partly autobiographical novel Ondskan (1981) was a story of family violence. Erik, the protagonist, is a young boy, who is regularly beaten after dinner by his sadistic stepfather. His mother plays Chopin, and does not defend him. At school Erik fights with his teachers, and is sent to a boarding school in Stjärnsberg – in reality Solbacka Läroverk. There the bullying continues, but eventually Erik takes his revenge. This "ugly duckling" theme of self-discovery, in which a misfit or outcast proves his superiority, repeats in a number of Guillou's books. Later Guillou's mother said in an interview, that she do not play the piano, and the daily beatings were not true. The film adaption of the book, directed by Mikael Håfström and starring Andreas Wilson, Henrik Lundström, and Linda Gyllenberg, premiered in 2003. "Till detta kom att han var en tämligen ståtlig man, före detta handbollsspelare i Sverige, före detta quarterback i ett amerikanskt universitetslag och dessuttom försedd med grevlig titel, fullkomlig utbildning i etikettsreglar, god uppfostran alltså, löjtnant i flottans reserv, motsvarigheten till pol mag i statskunskap med databehandling vid University of Southern California; kort och gott skulle han med den nya tidens värderingar, efter 60- och 70-talens utdöda radikalism, utan minsta ironi kunna beskrivas som en officer och gentleman."(Coq Rouge, Stockholm: Norstedts Förlag, 1990, p. 41; first published in 1986) Guillou's Coq Rouge novels have been translated into some 15 languages. These spy thrillers were among the few successful remnants, with works by John le Carré, Len Deighton and Robert Ludlum, that survived the diminishing popularity of the genre after the fall of the Soviet system. Carl Gustaf Gilbert Hamilton has special training in FBI and US Navy. He comes from the Swedish aristocracy, but he is also a former leftist, opposed the Vietnam war in the 1960s and was a member of the Maoist Clarté group. Hamilton works with Swedish Intelligence in his homeland and other countries. In the first book Hamilton's major adversary is an Israeli terrorist group, in Den demokratiske terroristen (1987) he destroys again a terrorist organization. James Bond's favorite element, the water, is central in the underwater adventure I nationens intresse (1988). Hamilton is accused of espionage in Fiendes fiende (1989) and he becomes a public figure. Ingen mans land (1992) takes the reader above the Pole Circle. In the story Hamilton stops the plan to smuggle nuclear weapons from Murmansk to Finland and further. Vendetta (1991) brings on the scene a new enemy: the Mafia in Sicily. In Ingen mans land (1992) President Mihail Gorbachev asks help from the President of Finland Mauno Koivisto, because military officers in Murmansk plan to sell nuclear weapons and smuggle them through Finland. When Finnish and American authorities are not allowed to operate in Russia, the only person, Carl Hamilton, with his special forces, is called to solve the threatening crisis. The tenth book in the series, I hennes majestäts tjänst (1994), in which the title is almost a copy of the James Bond novel On Her Majesty's Secret Service (1963), and En medborgare höjd över varje misstanke (1995), present Hamilton as a lonely man haunted by memories. He has risen to
the top of Intelligence, but lost his family in terrorist attacks. However, the character was
resurrected in Madame Terror (2006),
where Hamilton, as commander of a submarine, stands between the battle
of two women, the American forreign minister Condoleezza Rice and the
Palestinian brigade general Mouna al Husseini. The novel has a happy
ending: the Gaza blockade is dismantled and the idea of a Palestinian
state seems to become possible. Harald Zwart's film Hamilton from 1998, written by William Aldridge and Jonas Cornell, was based on novels Den enda segern and Ingen mans land. The Swedish super-agent saved the world again in the films Hamilton - I nationens intresse (2012) and Hamilton: Men inte om det gäller din dotter (2012), directed by Tobias Falk. Carl Hamilton actors include Stellan Skarsgård (Coq Rouge, Tribunal, Den demokratiske terrotisten), Peter Haber (Fiendens fiende), Stefan Sauk (Vendetta), Peter Stormare (Hamilton), and Mikael Persbrandt (Hamilton - I nationens intresse, Hamilton: Men inte om det gäller din dotter). As a child Guillou had been an avid reader of historical novels, especially he loved Sir Walter Scott's Ivanhoe
(1819). In 1998 Guillou moved from contemporary subjects to the
medieval world. His trilogy about the Crusades started with the novel Vägen till Jerusalem,
set in the 1200th century. The book was published by
Norstedt, who was for decades his publisher. However, Guillou left
Norstedt in the summer of 1999, and joined a new publishing house,
Ordupptaget. "'The road to Jerusalem took many turns in the beginning,
my dear dear Arn,' Father Henri said quietly. 'But this was God's will,
of what we are both convinced. Go now in peace!'" (The Road to Jerusalem,
translated by Steven T. Murray, London: HarperCollins, 2009, p. 378;
first published in Swedish as Vägen till Jerusalem, 2009)
The central character, Arn de Gothia, a superb swordsman and an
excellent horseman, joins the Knights Templar in the first part. After
getting himself in trouble in Sweden, Arn is sent to the
Holy Land as a punishment, and his lover Cecilia Algotsdotter, who is
prenant, is enclosed in a convent. Both characters are
persistent and clever survivors. Arn beats the famous Ivanhoe in a
tournament. Cecilia goes
through a period of being bullied, but gains authority when she brings
the basics of bookkeeping to the management of the convent. Guillou
combines their adventures with historical facts, refers to such figures
as Saladin, who recovered Jerusalem from the Christians and whom Arn
saves from bandits. In the third part, Riket vid vägens slut (2000) Arn returns to Sweden. These Crusades novels were worked into two films, Arn - Tempelriddaren (2008) and Arn - Riket vid vägens slut (2009), directed by Peter Flinth. Hans Gunnarson, who wrote with Guillou the script for Mikael Håfström's film
Ondskan, adapted the books into a screenplay. The historical saga continued in Arvet eftrer Arn
(2001), an independent part of the trilogy, which tells the story of
the Swedish nobleman Birger Jarl (Earl Birger). Sandra Ballif
Straubhaar has argued that Guillou's didactic agenda in the "Crusades"
series was to present early Swedish progressive thinking. "Guillou has
. . . portrayed a more multicultural early Sweden, coincidentally with
more respect given to manual laborers, than has been previously
acceptable to the Swedes." ('A Birth Certificate for Sweden, Packaged for Postmodernism: Jan Guillou's Templar Trilogy' by Sandra Ballif Straubhaar, in The Year's Work in Medievalism, 2002 - XVII, edited by Jesse G. Swan and Richard Utz, 2003, p. 68) Most of his novels, Guillou has typed on an Adler typewriter. His books have sold especially well in the Nordic countries except in Finland, where they are only relatively popular. Guillou was after Astrid Lindgren the second highest earning writer in Sweden. In 1999 Guillou founded the publishing company Piratforlaget with Liza Marklund, Sigge Sigfridsson, and Ann-Marie Skarp, his long-time partner whom he married in 2010. He has two children with the writer Marina Stagh. In addition of being a productive novelist, Guillou has worked for the television programs Magazinet (1981-84), Rekordmagazinet, and Grabbarna på Fagerhult (1990). He has also popularized academic historical research and published with with Leif G.W. Persson On jakt och jägare (1996), about hunting. Häxornas försvarare
(2002), based partly on Bengt Ankarloo's, Jonas Lillequist's and Gustav
Henningsen's studies, dealt with witch-hunts in the Nordic countries.
Guillou yields his theme from the 17th century to the 1990s, combining
it provocatively with false alarms on the sexual abuse of children. The
title of the book, "the counsellor of witches", refers to Alonso de
Salazar Frías, a priest, who saved at least 5,000 people from the hands
of the Inquisition. After finishing Fienden inom oss
(2007), Guillou no idea for the next novel. When his wife wondered why
family sagas in the style of Thomas Mann or John Galsworthy are not
written anymore, Guillou began to develop a story about the Norwegian
Lauritzen brothers, Lauritz, Oscar and Sverre. The first installment in
the series, entitled Brobyggarna (2010, Bridge Builders), was followed by Dandy (2012), set in the art and gay circles of London. The fourth volume, Att inte vilja se
(2014), started a debate over what was know about the Holocaust in
Sweden before 1945. Guillou argued in an interview that the Swedes knew
practically nothing. De
som dödar drömmar sover aldrig (2018), set in the 1970s, is partly
based on Guillou's conviction on espionage. Heinrich Böll, the 1972
Nobel Laureate for Literature, makes an appearance in the story. Den som dödade helvetets änglar
(2022) is the first of a series of novels featuring Erik Ponti, a
journalist, and Carl Hamilton; they both are retirees."Hamilton är 67
år och hans återupplivade vänskap från förr i världen, Erik Ponti, är
77 år," Guillou told in an interview. "De tycker att de skulle kunna
göra en och annan nytta i samhället i alla fall, fastän de är
pensionärer. Och så blir det förstås ett vådligt äventyr." ('Jan Guillou skriver ny "Hamilton"-bok: "Ett pensionärsäventyr"' by Natalia Demirian Genna, Aftonblabet, 09.19.2021) Guillou's several awards include the Great Journalist Award (1984), the Best Swedish Crime Novel Award (1988) for I nationens intresse, the Prix France Culture (1990) for Ondskan,
the Writer of the Year Prize (1998) by Fackförbundet SKTF, and Book of
the Year Literature Prize (2000) by Månadens bok. In 2004 Guillou
was awarded in Norway for his work as a historical writer. Guillou's
home is full of hunting trophies. For further reading: Riksfilistern: en otidsenlig betraktelse över Jan Guillous författarskap by Ola Holmgren (2023); Jan Guillou - utifrån by Paul Frigyes (2014); Swedish Cops: From Sjöwall and Wahlöö to Stieg Larsson by Michael Tapper (2014); Höjd över varje misstanke: en bok om Jan Guillou by Paul Frigyes (2013); Ordets makt och vanmakt: mitt skrivande liv by Jan Guillou (2009); Förförande fiktion eller historieförmedling?: Arn-serien, historiemedvetande och historiedidaktik by Carina Renander (2007); 'A Birth Certificate for Sweden, Packaged for Postmodernism: Jan Guillou's Templar Trilogy' by Sandra Ballif Straubhaar, in The Year's Work in Medievalism, 2002 - XVII, edited by Jesse G. Swan and Richard Utz (2003); In Arn’s Footsteps: Follow Jan Guillou’s Temple Knight Round Västra Götaland, Sweden by Anja Praesto and Marita Sjölin (2002); I Arns fotspår by Lennart Utgren, Dick Harrison, Bo Södervall, Kaj Wistbacka (2002); Hjältarna på Fagerhult by Pär Lorentzon (1993) Selected works:
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