May 7, 1945 – when confetti rained over Kungsgatan in Stockholm – Soviet bombers flew in over the Danish island. Tens of thousands of German refugees and soldiers had gathered there.
In Rønne, the hospital was bombed, and in Jens Liljestrand's novel, Dr. Edvard lies on top of the newly delivered Mrs. Rasmussen to protect her with his body. But even though the war in Ukraine triggered the writing, Liljestrand had no thoughts of the bombing of the maternity ward in Mariupol.
I haven't wanted to make such obvious connections, he says.
A bitterness
The title "Liberation" is almost ironic, the Russians' "liberation" actually became a one-year occupation with heavily drinking soldiers and rapes. Among the Bornholmers, there is still a bitterness about the English being stopped at Kastrup – an order from President Eisenhower that referred to an agreement with Stalin, Jens Liljestrand explains.
This spring, we see the same thing. Zelenskyj sits and gets scolded in the White House for not wearing a suit. It's the great powers' indifference to the small states and the small people's suffering and vulnerability.
Liljestrand, like Swedish Edvard, is strongly emotionally tied to the island through his mother's family and talks about his novel as "a fucking roller coaster". Where historians have a different version than eyewitness accounts, he has listened to the latter.
This historical narrative has such darkness in it, my way of handling the darkness was to write a dramatic book. I hadn't thought of it, but now it's pulling towards a thriller, I think the darkness pulled me there.
Dirty deals
Homosexual Edvard has fled the Stockholm police after having had forbidden park sex at the time. Now he gets drawn into dirty war deals, also in the resistance movement's abuses of the many young "German girls" who were locked up in a cellar and had their heads shaved.
This forced shaving is the worst that happens in Denmark. In my interpretation, it's because the resistance movement on Bornholm kept so calm during the war, this became an overreaction in the other direction.
What will the Bornholmers say about the novel?
If you start thinking about it, I think you're making a mistake. This has never been depicted in fiction before. I think: let's start there! If someone wants to write a counter-image, that's great.
On May 7 and 8, the towns of Nexø and Rønne on Bornholm were bombed – the German commander didn't want to surrender to the Russians, but to the English who never came. A dozen Bornholmers died, how many Germans were killed is unclear. On May 9, Russian soldiers landed on the island and stayed for almost a year. The inhabitants of Bornholm felt betrayed by Copenhagen and feared that the island would be incorporated into the Soviet Union. But on April 5, 1946, the Russian forces left Bornholm.
Born: 1974.
About Bornholm: "My Danish family has been on the island since the 1930s. I feel very much like a Bornholmer, even though I've never lived there permanently, it's my fixed point in life."
Occupation: Author, journalist, and literary scholar. Has written, among other things, a biography of Vilhelm Moberg, "The Man in the Forest".
Current: With the new novel "Liberation" and the non-fiction book "Child Soldiers: How Gangs Kidnap Our Future" which deals with gang criminality and which he has written together with the former lawyer Evin Cetin.
