In this episode I had the pleasure of talking to Mats Kejonen, a Swedish comic artist who recently published an abridged and illustrated version of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels’ The Communist Manifesto, which has now been translated to English and Italian.
Of course, we talked about the Manifesto (Tsarist Russia, Mats told me, saw the Communist Manifesto as much more dangerous than Marx’s Capital).
Mats told me how he became a comic artist as he was growing up in Kiruna, a city and mining community in the far north of Sweden.
We talked about Mats’ personal history and how it shaped the writing of the comic book Finnkampen (the Finn Struggle). The book, co-authored with Andreas Ali Jonasson, sheds light on the struggles and resistance of the hundreds of thousands of Finns who immigrated to and settled in Sweden. For a long time, the Finnish-speakers weren’t allowed to speak Finnish in school and many parents, ashamed and worried about negative social consequences, chose not to speak Finnish with their children in the home.
Comics didn’t have to be about superheroes. It could be about common people.
Finally, we spoke about the genocide in Palestine and why Mats is a member of Cartoonists for Palestine.
I have a principle that I should always mention Palestine in my books.
To learn more about Mats and his work, please visit:
https://leftwingbooks.net/products/the-communist-manifesto-illustrated-and-abridged
https://www.instagram.com/matskejonen/?hl=en
https://verbalforlag.se/forfattare/kejonen-mats/
Sound credits:
Political (loop) by AudioCoffee -- https://freesound.org/s/718891/ -- License: Attribution NonCommercial 4.0
Tintin (128bpm) A# Minor - Guitar.wav by onlineforever -- https://freesound.org/s/621465/ -- License: Attribution NonCommercial 4.0
