Kirunasvenskarna

A thinly fictionalized "documentary novel" describing the fate of Ernst Eriksson-Kalla and his family from Kiruna, Sweden, who were among the idealistic Swedes emigrating to the young Soviet Union in 1933 to contribute engineering expertise only to become enmeshed in Stalin's purges in the later part of the decade. Pohjanen's narrative is based on the account of elder daughter Alice Eriksson-Kalla, age 12 at the time of her father's disappearance and execution in 1938, who was able to return permanently to Sweden only in 1992 after the collapse of the Soviet Union.