Janne Teller: Hvis der var krig i Norden (War)

The latest addition to my website is Janne Teller‘s Hvis der var krig i Norden (War). This is a story that imagines that it is the Danes that become refugees (in the Danish original) but the British in this translation of the book. Britain as been taken over by a dictator with his nasty Britification police and is at war with the Scandinavian countries, who are bombing the UK. The fourteen year old boy (though Teller uses the second person to drive the point home to the readers) and his family have to flee and go to Egypt where there is a large refugee camp but where they are not particularly welcome, not least because the British behave badly. We follow their difficulties in trying to get asylum, work and learn the language, while things are not going well at home. Showing the problems faced from the British point of view is highly effective and, is of course, Teller’s aim.

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