The Darkest Room

This is a remarkable room, full of the memories of people who once lived at Eel Point. They are gone now. They passed the responsibility for the house and the land to us and disappeared-all that is left are names, dates, and short poems on postcards.

That’s what we will all be one day.

Memories and ghosts.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

There are many beautiful lighthouses along the coasts of Oland, and there are also cult sites where animals and people were once sacrificed. But Eel Point and its surroundings are freely invented, as are all the characters in this novel.

A book about Oland that has been particularly important to me during the writing of the novel is Fak-olandsk ovadersbok (Blizzard-A Book of Bad Weather on Oland) by Kurt Lundgren.

Thank you to Anita Tingskull, who showed me her beautiful home in Persnas, and to Hakan Andersson, who showed me the fine royal estate in Borgholm. Thanks to Cherstin Juhlin, and to Kristina Osterberg, who is the daughter of a lighthouse keeper. Thanks also to three “Stockholmers”: Mark Earthy (who found my maternal grandfather Ellert’s loading quay), Anette C. Andersson, and Anders Wennersten.

Thanks to the Gerlofsson family on Oland, above all my mother, Margot, and her cousins Gunilla, Hans, Olle, Bertil, Lasse, and their families.

Among those working on The Darkest Room, I would especially like to thank Lotta Aquilonius, Susanne Widen, Jenny Thor, and Christian Manfred.

Hugs to Helena and Klara; my father, Morgan; and my sister, Elisabeth, and her family.

Johan Theorin

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

JOHAN THEORIN was born in 1963 in Gothenburg, Sweden, and has spent every summer of his life on northern Oland. He is a journalist and scriptwriter. The Darkest Room is his second novel.

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