Kallocain
Karin Boye
Kallocain is a 1940 dystopian novel by Swedish novelist Karin Boye which envisions a future of drab terror. Seen through the eyes of idealistic scientist Leo Kall, Kallocain's depiction of a totalitarian world state may draw on what Boye observed or sensed about the Soviet Union, which she visited in 1928. An important aspect of the novel is the relationships and connections between the various characters, such as the marriage of the main character and his wife Linda Kall, and the feelings of jealousy and suspicion that may arise in a society with heavy surveillance and legal uncertainty.

One of its central ideas coincides with contemporary rumors of truth drugs that ensured the subordination of every citizen to the state. Both Aldous Huxley's Brave New World (1932) and Boye's Kallocain are drug dystopias, or societies in which pharmacology is used to suppress opposition to authority. However, unlike Brave New World, where a drug is used to suppress the urge to nonconformity generally, in Kallocain a drug is used to detect individual acts and thoughts of rebellion.

Kallocain has been translated into more than 10 languages and was adapted into a television miniseries in 1981 by Hans Abramson.

In 2016, the novel was nominated for the Retro Hugo award for the best science fiction novel of 1941.

Kallocain, med undertiteln Roman från 2000-talet, är en dagboksroman från 1940 av Karin Boye. Den är hennes både sista och mest kända roman, översatt till fler än tio olika språk.

Romanen innehåller inslag av både science fiction och dystopi, och beskriver ett framtida samhälle där individen tillhör staten, har betydelse enbart som en del i gruppen och ständigt övervakas. Den drar inspiration från samhällsutvecklingen i både Tyskland och Sovjetunionen innan andra världskriget. Trots det ständiga övervakandet och det stängda samhället beskriver romanen även djupa mänskliga känslor som kärlek och strävan efter frihet.