'The Room' Offers An Escape From The Office — Or Does It?

Transcript

INDIRA LAKSHMANAN, HOST:

Bjorn's new job is not going well. He finds his coworkers insufferable. He thinks his boss is belittling him. And it's all interfering with his productivity and his grand plans to climb the ladder of a faceless bureaucracy. But one day, everything changes when Bjorn yarn discovers a tiny, hidden room where he can step away from the troubles of his oppressive, open-plan office. And that's where the story steps into the surreal in the new novel called "The Room" by Swedish author Jonas Karlsson. He's also an award-winning actor and playwright, and he joins us now from Stockholm. Thanks for being with us.

JONAS KARLSSON: Well, thank you for having me.

LAKSHMANAN: Well, let's start out by telling us about Bjorn. He's rigid, self-absorbed, pedantic, off-putting. I mean, he's not exactly the kind of person you'd want in the next cubicle.

KARLSSON: No. You're probably right. Bjorn is kind of a special character, quite hard to be with I guess. But I must say that when I started writing this, I imagined that it was me walking into the room. And then both the story and the strange character sort of outgrew me. So he became someone that I don't really know who he is. But of course, he's based on me.

LAKSHMANAN: So he's based on you, but he's an exaggerated version of you it sounds like.

KARLSSON: Exactly.

LAKSHMANAN: Hopefully you're more tolerable in a workplace environment.

(LAUGHTER)

KARLSSON: I hope so.

LAKSHMANAN: Well, Bjorn is also quite obsessive. And there's a passage where he describes his daily schedule. Can you read that for us?

KARLSSON: Yes. I'd love to. (Reading) I arrived half an hour early each morning and followed my own timetable for the day. Fifty-five minutes of concentrated work, then a five-minute break including toilet brakes. I avoided any unnecessary socializing along the way. I requested and took home files documenting previous policy decisions so as to be able to study which phrases reoccurred and formed the basic vocabulary, so to speak. All this so that I could quickly and efficiently catch up and create a small but decisive advantage over my colleagues, who were already familiar with our workplace and the prevailing conditions.

LAKSHMANAN: So one day, Bjorn discovers a hidden room where he can shut the door, escape his colleagues and do his best work. So in this case, it turns out that Bjorn is the only one who can see this room. And his colleagues think he's delusional. So I don't want to be a spoiler, but is this a real space? Or is it only really to Bjorn?

KARLSSON: Well, I think that's up to the reader, actually, to decide. You know, I have written a lot of short stories, and I like to start with anything, like a situation or line or two or something that someone said. And in this case, it was the idea of the room, and I was walking into it. And then I just started writing and became this strange story.

LAKSHMANAN: Now in this story, Bjorn alienates everybody, and he's really more antagonist than protagonist. So I want to know do you see him as the perpetrator of his own victimhood, or is he a creative person trapped in a conformist environment? And were you worried about readers having empathy for him?

KARLSSON: Well, of course I did want him to be, in some way, annoying, but I wanted him to be annoying in the way that we can be annoyed by ourselves. Don't we all have, like, a little Bjorn inside of us? (Laughter) In the sense of, don't we all, from time to time, feel a little superior? You know, just - I know a lot of people say, for instance, that, well, I'm not particularly taken in by commercials. You know, other people might be, but I'm - I can see through that. I think that's quite - isn't it - don't we all have like that?

LAKSHMANAN: So I wonder do you mean this to be a comic parody because in a way, it's also the story of a man who may be mentally ill who gets bullied and eventually comes undone.

KARLSSON: Yes, you're right. And I think, well, let's face it, Bjorn is a very sad person, and I mean, he's got quite low self-esteem, of course. And I think - I do think that a lot of people are able to see through his rather harsh attitude as more a way of dealing with not fitting in, you know, because it's obviously much easier to just keep the distance and keep the superior attitude than facing the fact that I'm not one of the guys. You know, I'm not in the group. And I - when I was writing this, I had times when I was feeling really ill, you know. And sometimes, I was, like, wondering, oh, am I going mad here? You know, is this for real or what will my friends say when they read this? But then I left it for a while, and when I came back, I looked at it. And then I thought it was much funnier than I remembered it. And it made me think of the quote comedy, it's tragedy plus time.

LAKSHMANAN: I'm wondering if there's something Swedish about Bjorn's story. I mean, in American satire of office culture, a lot of it is quite comic from, you know, the cartoon strip we have "Dilbert," to the television series "The Office." And yours is a lot more dark, your portrayal of office life and the internal workings of the mind of this person. So is there something peculiarly Swedish about this book?

KARLSSON: Well, perhaps it's the darkness. I guess Swedes take the darkness for given, you know. It's there to begin with. We start with the darkness, and then we work our way out and try to find humor.

LAKSHMANAN: Jonas Karlsson. His new book is called "The Room." It's his first work translated into English. Thank you so much for joining us.

KARLSSON: Well, thank you so much for having me. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.