Safe Return Doubtful

translated from the Swedish by Neil Smith – Published 2014

This was Karlsson’s debut novel. To date, three of his novels have been translated into English, all of which are typical of his style, which includes a cast of oddballs, and Kafkaesque surrealism.

It centres on the office environment, and if read these days (it was published in 2014) would inevitably be compared to the TV series, Severance, in that it shares a theme of whether the mundane atmosphere of an office act as an incubator of insanity.

The Authority is a government department in Stockholm, but with an obscure purpose. The unreliable narrator, Björn, starts work there after being ‘moved’ from another civil service job. He’s a loner, with odd mannerisms, but happy to competing against his co-workers without taking their help or advice. He soon discovers the ‘room’, its door next to the toilets. It contains the standard office equipment and seems unused. It entices him, but his co-workers deny that it exists.

Its a book that you can’t quite guess in which direction it is going to head. It seems satirical, but of what is not immediately clear, more than just an amusing commentary on the pointlessness and mundanity of workplace routine.

Having read The Circus before this, it’s easy to spot this as a debut novel. His latter work is more accomplished, more pointed in its direction, though this nonetheless, is highly entertaining.

My GoodReads score 4 / 5