Adrian

“You who have the power over your child
and can get rid of it
or take it away
reject it, expose it”

Gunnar Ekelöf, translated by Robert Bly

Adrian stands by a railing, gazing out over the snow-laden streets. Nothing is distinct, nor clear. From the vantage point of eternity, reality is conditional. Truth is conditional, as are facts, someone’s inner workings. Everything dissipates, dissolves into an in-between, into a white void.

Twenty-four years earlier, Adrian is already a tormented soul. As an aspiring writer, Adrian studies literature at the university in Stockholm, where he meets Kristian and Johannes. They possess the vitality and charisma that Adrian lacks. They draw Adrian into a new world, where their days are spent at Café Valand, drinking liqueur and contemplating literature. At the turn of the millennium, everything and nothing is allowed; when Adrian and Kristian rent an apartment together, Kristian finds himself developing intense sexual feelings for his friend, while Adrian enters into a doomed relationship with the anarchic Elena.

The years pass, and society changes as fascism slowly darkens the map of Europe. Kristian and Johannes recede into secure middle-class lives while Adrian drifts aimlessly from place to place. With solitude as his only companion, Adrian loses himself to his poetry. His obsession with his never-ending elegy turns into a disillusioned analysis of the great poet Gunnar Ekelöf’s writing, where he sees themes touching on abortion and the loss of a child – nuances of his own grief over a life that did not come to pass.

Adrian is a wistful Künstlerroman and a portrayal of a city at the threshold of the new millennium. In his fourth novel, Maxim Grigoriev has composed an antifascist allegory combined with a devastating reflection of a life not lived and the terrible persistence of what could have been.