''Gentlemen'' is the fourth novel by Swedish author

Klas Östergren Klas Östergren (born 20 February 1955) is a Swedish novelist, short story writer, screenwriter, and translator. Östergren had a breakthrough with his fourth novel '' Gentlemen'' in 1980. He has been awarded numerous Swedish literary prizes, ...

, published in 1980. It was translated into English by

Tiina Nunnally Tiina Nunnally (born August 7, 1952) is an American author and translator. Early life and education Nunnally was born in Chicago, Illinois, and grew up in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, and St. Louis Park, Minnesota. She was an AFS exchange student to ...

in 2007. A film adaptation, '' Gentlemen'', directed by

Mikael Marcimain Mikael Marcimain (born 17 March 1970) is a Swedish film and television director. Marcimain has primarily directed advertisements and television dramas, for which he has received several awards. Notable in his filmography are the serials ''Laserma ...

, was released in 2014.

Plot summary

The novel is set in the late 1970s Stockholm. The narrator, Klas Östergren, is a young writer who shares the name with the author of the novel. He picks up a commission to write a pastiche of

Strindberg Johan August Strindberg (, ; 22 January 184914 May 1912) was a Swedish playwright, novelist, poet, essayist and painter.Lane (1998), 1040. A prolific writer who often drew directly on his personal experience, Strindberg wrote more than sixty p ...

's '' The Red Room'', updating its political satire to mark the centenary of its publication. Soon after, Klas finds out that he has been burgled on nearly all of his belongings. In a local boxing club he meets the elegant and charismatic Henry Morgan, a boxer, pianist and an ebullient if unreliable raconteur. Henry persuades Klas to move into his apartment, where he lives with his mentally unstable brother Leo. The second part of the novel tells the story of the Morgan brother's previous life. A

picaresque The picaresque novel ( Spanish: ''picaresca'', from ''pícaro'', for "rogue" or "rascal") is a genre of prose fiction. It depicts the adventures of a roguish, but "appealing hero", usually of low social class, who lives by his wits in a corru ...

story of Henry as, among other things, a smuggler of false passports to East Berlin, and Leo who finds out about a political scandal concerning Swedish sales of weapons to nazi-Germany during

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposing ...

. In the third part of the novel, Henry and Leo both mysteriously disappear, and Klas finds himself living alone in the apartment. He burns up his unsuccessful attempt to write a pastiche of ''The Red Room'' and begin to write a new story, the story about the Morgan brothers.

References

External links

1980 Swedish novels Novels by Klas Östergren Swedish-language novels Swedish novels adapted into films Novels set in Stockholm Albert Bonniers Förlag books {{1980s-novel-stub