Another type of celebrity death

A writer that meant quite a lot to me died recently: Sven Lindqvist (1932-2019). He wrote essays, documentary prose, travel stories and reports. After 1992 and the pubishing of his book Exterminate all the brutes, he mostly wrote about the history of imperialism and racism. One thing Sven Lindqvist was very left wing, and I like him the most when I was as most right wing* I have ever been. Then one other thing was that I wanted to live like him. Spend years and years in university, but also spend the  rest of your life traveling and writing. That was what he did, Mentioned book was written on a computer, while traveling alone in the Sahara desert. Traveling alone, while writing books turned out to be something I couldn’t do. Even if todays laptops and tablet must be much easier to travel with than whatever computer Lindqvist could have had around three decades ago. I should have had a plan B.


Speaking of travelling and writing. From Lindqvists book Desertdivers I learned about writers like Isabelle Eberhardt (1877-1904).



To write some superficial things about Eberhardt, she was ethical German, Jewish and Armenian born in Switzerland. She become a French citizens since she married an Algerian officer in the French army. She was a writer and adventurer, who dressed as a man since that gave her freedom she in her time and place couldn't get as a woman. Also she was self destructive and died when she was 27. Rock N Roll.

* Right wing in Sweden in the 90s & 00s, was not the same as American conservatism 2019. Examples in early 1990s we have a right wing government who opened the borders for asylum seekers. In late 00s we had a right wing government who legalized same sex marriage. Or if I wanted to give the illusion of being intellectual by name dropping Hegel. I have seen, online Americans calling Hegel "left", while the philosophy books i own, that's two, call Hegel “conservative”.