Christer Kihlmans självbiografi Livsdrömmen Rena (1982) i ett postkolonialt perspektiv

This article deals with the autobiography Livsdrömmen rena (1982; The Clear Dream of Life), written by the Finland-Swedish author Christer Kihlman. It is his second so-called South America book and is based on the writer’s own experiences from the early 1980s, when he visited several South American countries. The text is seen in a theoretical-methodological frame of postcolonial studies, i.e. the 1978 book Orientalism by Edward W. Said, which describes, how “the Orient”, Oriental people and nations were viewed by their western colonizers. The analysis, which also takes into account Latin American postcolonial specificities, follows the article author’s already performed interpretation of Kihlman’s first South America book, Alla mina söner (1980; translated as All My Sons, 1984).