Bread of Love

by Peder Sjögren

113 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1945

Reviews

[Simone · Rating 4 out of 5]

works such as these remind me that there are thousands of books lost to time; each a doorway into vast unexplored worlds; and all of them, the doors, the worlds, the works, will be forgotten.

[Adam · Rating 4 out of 5]

Peder Sjogren’s Bread of Love--published in 1945--is a very brief Swedish novel set during the Winter War of 1939-40, when Russia invaded Finland. A soldier, the narrator, arrives at the home of a widow to tell her of the deaths of her two sons. All of the war-bereaved, the narrator tells us, have a great thirst for details, so he tells her the entire story of the time leading up to the deaths.

Sjogren has written a heartbreaking war novel with vivid characters and frequent, if brief, literary passages of evocative metaphor and imagery. On the one hand, we have a climate that plays the strangest tricks on the minds of men exposed to it for extended periods; on the other hand, these men are willfully embracing certain illusions as a necessity for coping with the realities of war. Bread of Love occurs in the breaking point of the tension between these two factors.

An example of Sjogren’s talent for metaphor, from Chapter 1:

"I begin to talk about the daylight out there, the daylight that never quite became light. We lived as if half blind, without light. Only for a couple of hours around midday, it was as if a giant spider, with some of its legs paralyzed, crept slowly toward the line of the horizon and ejected its viscous, rubber-colored web in the form of light, a sort of dull hangover light the color of wood lice. It never got very far, the spider of the horizon, it faltered more and more, and finally we were alone with the darkness, the cold, and the empty north woods all the rest of the day."

[Ben · Rating 5 out of 5]

I begin to talk of the daylight out there, the daylight that never quite became light. We lived as if half blind, without light. Only for a couple of hours around midday, it was as if a giant spider, with some of its legs paralyzed, crept slowly toward the line of the horizon and ejected its viscous, rubber-colored web in the form of light, a sort of dull hangover light the color of wood lice. It never got very far, the spider of the horizon, it faltered more and more, and finally we were alone with the darkness, the cold, and the empty north woods all the rest of the day.

[Anna Hedenstedt · Rating 4 out of 5]

Omläsning efter kanske tjugo år. Den är vemodig och vacker i sina många skarpa iakttagelser och genomarbetade formuleringar. En författare som "har det".

Jag mindes slutet som annorlunda, men så blir det ju ibland när lång tid går, att man lägger större vikt vid de få detaljer man minns.

[Richard Wilson · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Finnish Soviet War theough the eyes of a surrealist

I begin to talk about the daylight out there, the daylight that never quite became light. We lived as if half blind, without light. Only for a couple of hours around midday, it was as if a giant spider, with some of its legs paralyzed, crept slowly toward the line of the horizon and ejected its viscous, rubber-colored web in the form of light, a sort of dull hangover light the color of wood lice. It never got very far, the spider of the horizon, it faltered more and more, and finally we were alone with the darkness, the cold, and the empty north woods all the rest of the day."

Peter Sjögren, " Bread of Love"

[Richard · Rating 5 out of 5]

strange pace and setting surreal short worth reading again.

[Susan · Rating 4 out of 5]

WW II, Finland - Russia