Published in 1968, ‘The Legionnaires’ (Swedish: Legionärerna) is a documentary novel by Swedish author Per Olov Enquist that won the ‘Nordic Council Literature Prize‘ in 1969. Enquist grew up in Hjoggböle (Västerbotten), graduated at the University of Uppsala, and worked as a journalist and independent writer until his debut with the novel ‘The Magnetist’s Fifth Winter’: he has since been a successful novelist, playwright and debater. ‘The Legionnaires’ is a documentary novel about the events related to the extradition of Baltic soldiers from Sweden to the Soviet Union shortly after the Second World War. The narrative consists of several layers, as Enquist uses the historic material to highlight problems and issues such as: is it actually possible to perform an unbiased study of an event? What responsibility do individuals have in overall political decisions? According to the Adjudicating Committee “the novel is a qualified artistic expression of modern man’s attempts to understand himself and his contemporary situation through a richly nuanced study of a complicated chapter in postwar Nordic history.”
