Willy Kyrklund

Paul Wilhelm "Willy" Kyrklund (born 1921 in Helsinki, Finland) is a Finland-Swedish author living in Uppsala, Sweden. Honorary doctorate at Uppsala university in 1994.

He is the son of an engineer. After he took his exams (corresponding to A-level) in 1938 in Finland, his family moved to Sweden, where Kyrklund studied Chinese, Russian and mathematics. He also worked with creating data codes.

Kyrklund's fictitious works are influenced by modernism; his early short stories at first resembles surrealism, where the storyline is concealed by symbolism, which contributes to conveying the mix of bitter irony, reconciliation and alienation. Those are characteristics of his writings, together with its everyday absurdities, which to some extent resembles Torgny Lindgren. However, in contrast to surrealism, Kyrklund's works are highly aware and well thought out.

Recurring themes are pointlessness and powerlessness, where good and bad meet in an ungraspable and sometimes deliberately incomprehensible greyscale. Man is not born to sin; there is no choice, and sin becomes unavoidable. Often sinful deeds approach, while the future sinner observes in confusion, uncomprehending and unable to change the course of events.

However, Kyrklund succeeds in portraying his failing characters with great empathy and indulgence, yet with the distance of an observer. In his stories he often applies classical motives from the Bible and the antique era, motives that are structurally eternal, patterns that can not be broken.

His works have been translated into French, German and Finnish. Some works that initially were written as prose have been rewritten to drama.