Jan Myrdal - Written Production

Written Production

Myrdal is a prolific writer, both of books and newspaper columns; he was first employed as a journalist at a local newspaper, after having dropped out of gymnasium to concentrate on his writing. He got his breakthrough in 1963 with the book Report from a Chinese Village, an anthropologic study of a Chinese village in Mao's China. Subsequently he has written many similar "reports" and travel notes from Asian countries, including India, Afghanistan and the then-Soviet Central Asian republics, in collaboration with his life partner, Gun Kessle. His 1968 book Confessions of a Disloyal European was chosen by the New York Times as one of that year's 'ten books of particular significance and excellence'.

Myrdal's best-known works include his many autobiographical books, I novels, mainly about his childhood and his complex, conflicted relationship with his parents, Alva Myrdal and Gunnar Myrdal. The first of these books caused scandal when they were first published in Sweden, due to the bad light they cast on Alva and Gunnar, who were among the most esteemed public intellectuals and politicians of their time.

Myrdal is an eclectic author, who has developed a wide range of special interests in topics deemed obscure by many, and who seeks to place art, literature and popular culture in an ever-political context of historical and social forces. He has written books on such diverse subjects as Meccano, wartime propaganda posters and French 18th-century caricature art; he even edited a wine column for a short while. The line dividing art, literature and politics is thin and fluid, if at all existent, in Myrdal's works, and he will regularly dive into far-reaching historical and cultural exposés in his political agitation.