Excerpt from The Memoirs of Stockholm Sven by Nathaniel Ian Miller, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

These concerns were pedestrian, however, and I led a pedestrian life. The raw ache to blind myself with white light somewhere in the polar regions had faded, and with it, my sense of hope. I became something of a fatalist, or at least a cynic. I was bitter. At times I could even be cruel.

Olga was twenty-two when she gave birth to her first child, a boy. Sweet Olga. How openly she yearned for my approval; how childishly I mourned our separation and withheld it. Adulthood is not often kind to the closest of friends, or kin. I did not care for her husband, Arvid, who was a boor. Always cheerful when he saw me, always generous with the modest comforts of his kitchen and home, and always rebuffed by my coldness. Often I would use elevated language I'd learned from reading Nansen and other great men, striving only to alienate us further. It gave me no joy, but I did it anyway.

"Sven!" he might say, beaming. "How wonderful it is to see you. I trust things are well, or, shall I say, well enough at the mill. Please, come in, I will make you some tea."

"Arvid," I might reply. "Mechanized industry is nothing but a cancer visited upon the modern world. My servitude within the benighted hives of this city is an enduring nightmare from which I am unlikely to wake. Things are not well, and nor are they well enough. Where is my sister?"

This coldness could not help but spread to Olga, implicated by her proximity to Arvid. How was it that I held her to a higher standard? How did I expect so much more from her, when I myself had settled for so little? The memory pains me still.

When she gave birth to Wilmer, she did not simply write, or ask her husband to travel halfway across the city, to tell me the news. No, she packed up her mewling infant in a heavy swaddling cloth, wrapped him in scarves, and traipsed through the dirty corners of Stockholm by foot, so that she might present him to me in person. She had lost a not inconsiderable amount of blood in the birth only four days earlier, and was still weak. I do not know how she made it. It was an audacious act for a woman in her state. If only I'd had the sense to commend her at the time. My brave sister.

I was still on shift when she arrived at my apartment. With the door locked she waited in the hallway, no doubt trying her best to protect my neighbors from the bewildered cries of her child, for three hours. When at last I came home, she stood to greet me. Her face looked tired, unimaginably tired, but there was a light in her eyes I hadn't seen in several years.

"Dear Sven!" she said. "Look! This is Wilmer. Can you believe he was living in me just a few short days ago? The world is such a very strange place."

"Is it?" I replied, and opened the door.

Within my dingy cell, whose only view was a slab of bricks under the thin, weak light of an alleyway, we sat at the tiny table. I averted my eyes while she nursed Wilmer. I knew she was waiting for me to bestow some kind of praise or blessing upon her child, upon this staggering achievement, and the knowledge of this only irked me as it grew until it filled the room, and I could not speak. Young men are unparalleled in selfishness. It surrounds them like a mist.

"Sven," she said at last. "I know your life is somewhat less than you might wish. As is mine, of course. But we are in it together. So, dear brother, will you not look upon this child and tell me he is wonderful?"

I gazed briefly at the wrinkled parasite wriggling in her arms. She was right. She was always right. The child was something extraordinary. He had fought his way forth into the cold and dirt, and that was only the beginning. Every day from this day to the next would be just as difficult. He squinted at me, his eyes big and watery. I felt a grudging admiration for this semi-human thing. He was ugly but intrepid. I should have said so.

"Hmm," I said. "No doubt he has a bright future sweating and straining in some hellish factory, hemorrhaging his meager wages so that he may survive until his early death."

Excerpted from The Memoirs of Stockholm Sven by Nathaniel Ian MIller. Copyright © 2021 by Nathaniel Ian MIller. Excerpted by permission of Little Brown & Company. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.