[Quiet Man Cometh]

21: The Brothers Lionheart by Astrid Lindgren (Swedish Bröderna Lejonhjärta)

I expect most people in North America would recognize Lindgren as the creator of Pippi Longstocking if nothing else (I certainly had no clue who she was prior to University). I read The Brothers Lionheart for class and it's one of those that I'm both happy and annoyed with at the same time. It's a good book, but not really a happy one. I was just rereading a few passages and they still make me cry.

The Brothers Lionheart is labelled "fantasy" and I'd put it in the same vein as LOTR, or The Dark is Rising, in the sense that it deal more with the myth and folklore end over generic wizards and unicorns. The book opens with Johnathan Lion comforting his sickly younger brother, Karl, by telling him about Nangiyala, a place of heroic adventures and where people go after they die. Nangiyala is the place where the sagas happen.

The book is fairly dark in terms of subject matter, and caused some controversy if I recall correctly, particularly with how it approaches death. Karl is dying, and the story is taking place in the afterlife. If one wants to get literary about it, it also deals with oppression (fairly realistically in my view), warfare, honour and character. The narrative feels a little clunky, but that could be because I'm reading a translation, or because it's being told by a nine year old boy.

Good book, but I'm still deciding on how I feel about the ending.