The Unit
by Ninni Holmqvist
List Price: $14.95
Pages: 272
Format: Paperback
ISBN: 9781590513132
Publisher: Other Press
Ninni Holmqvist lives in Skåne, Sweden. She made her debut in 1995 with the short story collection Kostym [Suit] and has published two further collections of short stories since then. She also works as a translator. The Unit marks Holmqvist’s debut as a novelist.
Marlaine Delargy has translated novels by Åsa Larsson and Johan Theorin, among others, and serves on the editorial board of the Swedish Book Review. She lives in Shropshire, England.
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Q: The Unit is not set in the present, but its echoes of present-day issues are clear and ominous. Describe the world of The Unit.
A: The Unit is a dystopia set in a near future. It is about people who don’t have any children or anyone else who loves them and need them, and who aren’t useful to the society in any other way either. These people are called “dispensable”, and they are picked up at there homes at a certain age (women at 50, men at 60) and taken to special units (“reservbanksenhet” in Swedish) for biological material, where they are supposed to serve the society through participating in various tests (like animal testing but made on people), but also, eventually, by donating organs to those of the society’s needed citizens --- the ones who produce and raise children, the loved ones, the ones who contribute to the economic growth --- that are afflicted with severe illnesses and need organs from healthy bodies to survive. Dorrit Weger, who just turned 50, is one of those dispensable. She is a writer, childless, quite poor, and lives alone with her dog. The story begins with her arrival at the unit, an establishment/institution she immediately finds a lot more comfortable and human and loving and beautiful than she ever could have expected.
Q: The Unit raises a number of complex --- and sometimes disturbing --- ethical questions. Do you see the novel as having a central moral theme?
A: The book is above all written as a critique of society and they way political leaders today see everything in figures and numbers. But my aim was also to raise questions like: What is freedom? What is human dignity? How do we humans value our selves and each other? But The Unit is also very much a story about love (Dorrit meets the love of her life at the unit, a man called Johannes, and she also, miraculously, gets pregnant) and friendship and loyalty.
Q: Who did you write The Unit for? Did you have someone --- personally, or in society --- that you intended the story for?
A: My intention was that it is for everyone. But I guess it might especially appeal to middle aged single people, childless ones. But also people that are or are close to other categories of “dispensable” people: disabled people for instance, long time unemployed persons, culture workers. And people who are critical of capitalism and its economic system. Perhaps also people who don’t mind being provoked.
© Copyright 2009 by Ninni Holmqvist. Reprinted with permission by Other Press. All rights reserved.
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