The Voices Beyond

Afterword

Parts of this novel are about what is usually known as the Great Terror, when Josef Stalin started a secret war against his own people in the 1930s. This involved mass arrests and arbitrary executions and the establishment of a huge number of labour camps known as gulag right across the Soviet Union. The Terror affected both Soviet citizens and immigrants who had come from the West in the belief that the Soviet Union was the workers’ paradise. At least one of them was from Öland, according to Tvingade till tystnad, Kaa Eneberg’s book about Swedish emigrants to Russia. This unknown emigrant provided the inspiration for Aron Fredh.

The rocket disaster at a test site to the east of the Aral Sea in October 1960 and the NKVD massacre of Polish prisoners of war in April 1941 are actual events. Aron’s story was also inspired by various facts and anecdotes in books such as Alfred Badlund’s memoir Som arbetare i Sovjet, Julian Better’s Jag var barn i Gulag, Robert Conquest’s The Great Terror, Simon Sebag Montefiore’s Stalin: The Court of the Red Tsar, Donald Rayfield’s Stalin and His Hangmen, Owen Matthews’ Stalin’s Children, Svetlana Alexievich’s Second-hand Time, Harald Welzer’s Perpetrators and Anne Applebaum’s Gulag: A History. I found facts about emigrants from Öland to North America in Amerika tur och retur by Ulf Wickbom and Walter Frylestam, and in Amerika, dröm eller mardröm by Anders Johansson, as well as through the stories told by my own family on the island.

Thanks to Ulrica Fransson, Hans Gerlofsson, Cherstin Juhlin, Caroline Karlsson, Ing-Mari and Jim Samuelsson, and Ture Sjöberg. And to Åsa Selling and Katarina Ehnmark Lundquist.

Finally, I would like to thank some of the authors who have written about Öland before me and pointed out interesting routes around the island: Tomas Arvidsson, Thekla Engström, Margit Friberg, Carl von Linné (who, unfortunately, was in a bit of a hurry when he travelled through northern Öland), Thorsten Jansson, Anders Johansson, Barbro Lindgren, Åke Lundqvist, Anders Nilson, Rolf Nilsson, Per Planhammar, Ragnhild Oxhagen, Anna Rydstedt, Niklas Törnlund and Magnus Utvik. And the island’s two lyrical stars, Lennart Sjögren and Erik Johan Stagnelius.

Johan Theorin