“The Savior from Hvidovre” by Kaspar Colling Nielsen – Reviews and recommendations

The Danes like to elevate their best writers as rock stars. Kaspar Colling Nielsen fits the role with his disheveled exterior and his challenging and entertaining novels. He has received several awards for his writing, and Michel Houellebecq himself wrote highly of his previous novel “The European Spring”. “The Savior from Hvidovre”, on the other hand, does not defend Nielsen’s reputation as a literary heavyweight. The novel is fun, but unfortunately quite superficial. The world’s most important person The main character Allan Thornbum is a poet who has stopped writing. Nevertheless, he lives a life in the service of poetry, an “ascetic, monk-like life, cleansed of all luxury”. In a basement apartment just outside Copenhagen, he lives with his cat Felix and grows hashish behind some fir trees in the garden. He earns a living as a traffic counter. Sitting in a folding chair on the street, he presses a button every time a car drives by. But in his spare time, Allan reads poems and writes comments on the poems before he files it all in his private filing cabinet. There is a good deal of defiance in Allan’s quiet life project. Neither the climate crisis nor the corona pandemic particularly concerns him. First and foremost, he wants to be in peace. One day the Danish Prime Minister knocks on the door. Mount Vesuvius has had its worst volcanic eruption in thousands of years. The ash clouds put Europe and North Africa in darkness and put food production and communication networks out of action. The Danish government’s analyzes show that if Allan just writes another poem, all the problems will cease. Effective comic timing This is a book that unreservedly tries to be funny. At times it succeeds quite well in this. The contrast between Allan’s defiant evasion and his enormous importance in world history is comical enough. WRITTEN THE STATE COUNCIL’S SPEECHES: Kaspar Colling Nielsen has previously been a speech writer for the Danish Minister for Climate, Energy and Supply, Dan Jørgensen. Now he writes books and scripts for film and TV. Photo: Thomas Wiborg / news As often in the past, Nielsen is good when he writes about animals: Reflections on the law of cat clawing, pigeons’ relationship to death and the presence of dog poo in the cityscape are subtle and genuinely fascinating. Nielsen also has effective comic timing. I laughed out loud just at the simple realization of why Allan has stopped writing: “He didn’t care for that shit anymore.” But the author’s fourth novel has several problems that the many fine digressions cannot cover. Donald Duck It was not meant as a compliment when I used the adjective “ellevill” in the title. This Danish word originally means to be driven wild and mad by elves. Nowadays it is used for something that is exaggerated, perhaps a little Donald Duck-like. In “Frelseren fra Hvidovre” I get the feeling that almost anything could have happened. Allan could have been transformed into a quacking duck and teleported back to 1889 to kill Baby-Hitler. Even something that extreme wouldn’t change all the world in this book. A novel may well contain elements that break the bounds of reality. But if the elements do not appear plausible within the novel’s own universe, the reader quickly loses interest. Annoyingly easy-going Allan gains many followers who believe he is the son of God. But central elements in Christian theology, such as sin, atonement and life after death, find no place in the novel. The concept of “saviour” is just taken over as an empty shell. It all becomes annoyingly easy. The novel touches on topics such as the role of art in society, housing policy and political correctness. But it is difficult to see any real satirical intent behind the project. Compared to, for example, Nielsen’s “The Danish Civil War 2018–2024”, which was both wild and thought-provoking, “Frelseren i Hvidovre” appears significantly shallower. The superficiality of our time After Allan has at one point been on a trip to heaven, he is asked what it is like up there in the Kingdom of Heaven? The narrator reflects on how the question is completely free of genuine curiosity: You could say that Nielsen is criticizing the superficiality of our time. But when the first laugh has subsided, the novel is also hit by criticism: Nielsen really just wants to write about something, it seems. That’s understandable. Because he can really write. That’s probably why I’m disappointed by this novel, which primarily seems to be one big joke. Or a “joke”, as the Danes say. news reviews Title: “The Savior from Hvidovre” Author: Kaspar Colling Nielsen Publisher: Cappelen Damm Genre: Novel Number of pages: 272 Date: October 2022



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