What do you think?
Rate this book
Baron Lördag
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 of 1 review
June 20, 2026
Don't Judge a Book by Its Cover (part 94)
A couple of weeks ago, Not came home from a visit to town looking pleased with herself. She'd walked past Oxfam's charity bookshop, been unable to resist the temptation to stop and browse, and noticed a book in Swedish. It only cost two dollars, so she'd picked it up on the off-chance.
"What do you think?" she asked.
I glanced at it, and it certainly didn't seem very interesting. The cover art was unappealing, and the title, Baron Lördag, means "Baron Saturday". Flicking through the first few pages, the style looked YA-ish, not my favourite genre. I found that the central character was a Black woman in her early twenties, born in Haiti but adopted when still a baby by Swedish parents, while the author appeared to be a middle-aged white Swede. I was in fact mildly repulsed, it seemed tasteless. What business did middle-aged white Swedes have writing about young Black women? And I don't think I was alone in reacting this way. Another thing that influenced my judgement was that the book didn't even have a Goodreads page, much less a rating or a review. But for some reason, and I still can't say what it was, I went back later and continued.
Well, how fucking wrong can you be. The author, it turns out, has an extraordinarily intimate connection to Haiti's people, culture and language. He has visited the island innumerable times, written at least three more books about it, founded a school there, and, not least, adopted three Haitian children. It would not surprise me at all to find that Marie, the central character in Baron Lördag, is partly based on one of his own daughters, or perhaps that the book was written expressly for them. It is in no way disrespectful.
Even more, the real heroine isn't Marie, it's Haiti. He loves the Haitian people, and he thinks they have been terribly misunderstood by the rest of the world. One of the most startling aspects is his passionate defence of Voodoo: he makes a good case for the claim that the hatred and contempt most white people feel for it is just another manifestation of colonialism. They hate it because it is the Black people's own religion; this thought, I am ashamed to say, had literally never even crossed my mind. I will be careful in future not to use the word "Voodoo" in a denigrating way.
For similar reasons, the book is written very simply and directly, but that is not, as I had first imagined, because he's writing YA. He wants to give you the feel of Haitian Creole, a language I had previously known nothing about, but which you rapidly understand is, indeed, very simple and direct. There is a great deal of Krèyol, often untranslated, mixed in with the Swedish. No doubt this further undermined the book's sales figures, but I found it fascinating. I have already downloaded Valdman's Ann Pale Kreyol and read a couple of lessons.
What a remarkable person Göran Lundin must be. It is positively a crime that none of his books have been translated into any other language, or even read much in Swedish. Someone ought to do something about that.
A couple of weeks ago, Not came home from a visit to town looking pleased with herself. She'd walked past Oxfam's charity bookshop, been unable to resist the temptation to stop and browse, and noticed a book in Swedish. It only cost two dollars, so she'd picked it up on the off-chance.
"What do you think?" she asked.
I glanced at it, and it certainly didn't seem very interesting. The cover art was unappealing, and the title, Baron Lördag, means "Baron Saturday". Flicking through the first few pages, the style looked YA-ish, not my favourite genre. I found that the central character was a Black woman in her early twenties, born in Haiti but adopted when still a baby by Swedish parents, while the author appeared to be a middle-aged white Swede. I was in fact mildly repulsed, it seemed tasteless. What business did middle-aged white Swedes have writing about young Black women? And I don't think I was alone in reacting this way. Another thing that influenced my judgement was that the book didn't even have a Goodreads page, much less a rating or a review. But for some reason, and I still can't say what it was, I went back later and continued.
Well, how fucking wrong can you be. The author, it turns out, has an extraordinarily intimate connection to Haiti's people, culture and language. He has visited the island innumerable times, written at least three more books about it, founded a school there, and, not least, adopted three Haitian children. It would not surprise me at all to find that Marie, the central character in Baron Lördag, is partly based on one of his own daughters, or perhaps that the book was written expressly for them. It is in no way disrespectful.
Even more, the real heroine isn't Marie, it's Haiti. He loves the Haitian people, and he thinks they have been terribly misunderstood by the rest of the world. One of the most startling aspects is his passionate defence of Voodoo: he makes a good case for the claim that the hatred and contempt most white people feel for it is just another manifestation of colonialism. They hate it because it is the Black people's own religion; this thought, I am ashamed to say, had literally never even crossed my mind. I will be careful in future not to use the word "Voodoo" in a denigrating way.
For similar reasons, the book is written very simply and directly, but that is not, as I had first imagined, because he's writing YA. He wants to give you the feel of Haitian Creole, a language I had previously known nothing about, but which you rapidly understand is, indeed, very simple and direct. There is a great deal of Krèyol, often untranslated, mixed in with the Swedish. No doubt this further undermined the book's sales figures, but I found it fascinating. I have already downloaded Valdman's Ann Pale Kreyol and read a couple of lessons.
What a remarkable person Göran Lundin must be. It is positively a crime that none of his books have been translated into any other language, or even read much in Swedish. Someone ought to do something about that.
Displaying 1 of 1 review