The Beast

AUTHORS’ NOTE

Writing a novel sometimes struck us as a very strange thing to do. You rule the world by tapping on your keyboard, sending out instructions about how it should look. We used our power to create prisons and woodland and roads that no one will ever see. We have moved nursery school locations and described nonexistent rooms in some of the official buildings in Stockholm.

We have also written about things which we wished were pure invention, exaggerations, in order to sell our book on its dramatic plot.

Not so.

Destructive people who spit on their own humanity and end by exterminating themselves exist in real life. Men like Bernt Lund, with his sadistic obsessions and inability to engage emotionally with others, walk the streets. So do men like Dickybird, abused as a child until he wants to cut down anyone who reminds him of it. The two Steffanssons, Fredrik and Agnes, are the kind who can lose everything and still search for a way to survive. There are quite a few Lennart Oscarssons, who despise the paedophiles they are meant care for. Hilding Oldéus, who has packed away emotion and keeps the lid on with drugs, who is always afraid and who turns himself into an arselicker for protection by someone less fearful; he exists in reality. Flasher-Göran, condemned for life because his one mistake is never forgotten, and Bengt Söderlund, out to defend his precious property and his precious children by taking the law into his own hands if necessary; they exist too.

All these characters, absurd as they may seem, walk among us.

Our thanks to the many who helped us. Thanks to Rolle, for sharing your thoughts about being inside. To our publisher Sofia Brattselius Thunfors, for being both generous and demanding, for keeping our feet on the ground without stopping occasional flights of fancy. To Fia, reader of our virgin manuscript, for forcing us to rewrite, and to Ewa, who opened her door to us when we needed it. To Dick, for giving us the courage to try. And to those of you who have read it all and put up with us from beginning to end.