Local Labour, Cosmopolitan Toil: Geo-Cultural Dynamics in Swedish Working-Class Fiction

In the renowned and epoch-making working-class novels from the Swedish 1930s, claims for social and economic justice reflect a local struggle with distinctly national and cosmopolitan significance. Generally, these novels can be described as having local characters and settings, national narrative perspectives, and cosmopolitan plots, but a closer look reveals a much more varied picture. There is, in fact, no general tendency of geo-cultural dynamics in this historically distinct literary current. When the novels are translated into English, however, a more distinct pattern occurs: regional embeddedness is considerably weakened in the translation process, leaving room for much stronger national ties and a more extensive cosmopolitan significance.