The Darkest Room (38 page)
Authors: Johan Theorin
There are many beautiful lighthouses along the coasts of Öland, 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 Öland that has been particularly important to me during the writing of the novel is
Fåk—öländsk ovädersbok (Blizzard—A Book of Bad Weather on Öland)
by Kurt Lundgren.
Thank you to Anita Tingskull, who showed me her beautiful home in Persnäs, and to Håkan Andersson, who showed me the fine royal estate in Borgholm. Thanks to Cherstin Juhlin, and to Kristina Österberg, 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 Öland, 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 Widén, Jenny Thor, and Christian Manfred.
Hugs to Helena and Klara; my father, Morgan; and my sister, Elisabeth, and her family.
Johan Theorin
J
OHAN
T
HEORIN
was born in 1963 in Gothenburg, Sweden, and has spent every summer of his life on northern Öland. He is a journalist and scriptwriter.
The Darkest Room
is his second novel.
The Darkest Room
is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
2009 Delta Trade Paperback Edition
Translation copyright © 2009 by Random House, Inc.
All rights reserved.
Published in the United States by D
ELTA
, an imprint of The Random House Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.
D
ELTA
is a registered trademark of Random House, Inc., and the colophon is a trademark of Random House, Inc.
Originally published as
Nattfåk
by Wahlström & Widstrand, Stockholm, in 2008.
Copyright © 2008 by Johan Theorin.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Theorin, Johan.
[Nattfåk. English]
The darkest room: a novel / Johan Theorin ; translated [from the Swedish]
by Marlaine Delargy.
p. cm.
eISBN: 978-0-440-33897-0
1. Öland (Sweden)—Fiction. I. Delargy, Marlaine. II. Title.
PT9877.3.H46N3713 2009
839.73′8—dc22 2009020857
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