Kulturonsdag in Lilla Edet invites Björn Wiman who, after being head of culture at Expressen, moved on to Dagens Nyheter where he has worked since 2010. As a writer, he has previously published “Sent på jorden” (2018) and “Hatet mot judarna” (together with Sanna Sjöswärd, 2021). “In a room at the hospital” was released in September 2022.
On a cold February evening in 1947, two days before her seventh birthday, a girl with TB is admitted to Norrtull Hospital. After four months in the hospital, she is sent to the children’s sanatorium Tjärnan in Dalarna to recover. Only to Lucia will the little girl be allowed to come home to her family again. The girl will become Björn Wiman’s mother. In this book, he tells her story: the stay at the sanatorium, the return home and the fear of getting sick again, the silence that surrounded the illness in the family, how the experience shaped her as a child and as an adult.
It is also a story about the dreaded lung disease that has claimed so many lives throughout human history, which has come to symbolize dirt and poverty as well as refinement, culture and hunger for life. And about why tuberculosis became the emerging public home’s greatest enemy.
“In a room at the hospital” is a moving, rich and insightful book about a disease, about the people who suffered from it and about a society that perhaps went too far in its eagerness to eradicate it. Because what does it do to a small child to be away from their parents for so long? And what has it done to the generation that came after?
The event in Kulturhuset Eden next Wednesday is free of charge, but participants must pre-register online. More information about the event is available on the municipality’s website.
2024-02-18 08:00:12
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