Thord Eriksson
Thursday 16 May 2024
7pm

A book about those who came here, those who were left behind and those who will be forced out of Sweden.

‘I thought I would write a book about an evacuation, I couldn’t imagine that it would be about a country in Europe guarding a position of the extreme outer edge’, writes Thord Eriksson in his foreword.

In early summer 2021, anxiety is spreading among the Afghans working at the Swedish embassy in Kabul. The Taliban are on the offensive and other countries are already preparing to help Afghans leave the country. But not Sweden. ‘Two of our cleaners have presented stamped threatening letters,’ the Swedish ambassador writes to a holiday-dazed Foreign Ministry in late July. There was no reaction, and the decision to evacuate was not taken until after the Taliban had seized power.

As Thord Eriksson begins to write this book, his questions centre on the reluctant rescue operation. The questions become more and more numerous when Sweden, before the last rescue plane has even taken off from Kabul, starts making decisions to deport Afghans again. Some are being rescued in one direction while others are to be sent back in the other. How is this possible?

Thord Eriksson, born in 1966, is a journalist and author. His last book Those who remained was described as ‘the social reportage of the year’ in Expressen and as one of the best non-fiction books of 2019 in Göteborgs-Posten.

The talk will be held in Swedish.

Metod is an ongoing series of talks about working methods within the field of contemporary art and culture.