Nikanor Teratologen's first book to be translated into English situates itself in an insidious series of frames in the fantastic tradition pioneered by such gothic novelists as Mary Shelley, opening with a translator's note, a preface by the author-wherein he claims the text that follows was found and entrusted to him by "a dear friend with exquisitely cruel tastes"-, and a foreword by that same friend who promptly proclaims, "Last summer I murdered an eleven-year-old boy" by the name of Helge. The bulk of the book is supposedly the murdered boy's manuscripts, titled "Assisted Living", wherein he writes of his late pederast grandpa, Holger Holmlund, the outcast devil of the Swedish town of Skellefteå.
Niclas Lundkvist, pen name Nikanor Teratologen, says of the first novel's genesis: "The reason I wrote it is to draw attention to the loveless society we live in, quiet and orderly on the surface, but predator-like and Satanic within. The novel was a way for me to cast out demons in general."
The Marquis de Sade is alive and well and living in Sweden--or perhaps author Nikanor Teratologen is the devil himself, sending the English-speaking world a Scandinavian squib to remind readers that such reassuring figures as vampires and serial killers are no more frightening than pixies or unicorns in light of the depravity contained in one quiet suburb. Reading like a deranged hybrid of "Deliverance," "Naked Lunch," and "Tuesdays with Morrie," and rivaling "The 120 Days of Sodom" in its challenge to our assumptions as to what is acceptable (or not) in literature.