Jan Guillou (born in Södertälje in 1944) is a Swedish writer and journalist with French citizenship from birth. He is known for investigative journalism in the 1970s, for spy fiction and for historical novels. His career shows how a reporter can become a bestselling novelist without leaving public controversy behind.
He grew up between Sweden and Finland, the son of a Breton-Swedish father and a mother of Norwegian descent. He was expelled from a Stockholm school for his behaviour and finished secondary school in 1964. After working for the magazine Folket i Bild in 1966 and 1967, he helped found Folket i Bild/Kulturfront.
In 1973, with Peter Bratt, he published articles that exposed Informationsbyrån (IB), a secret Swedish intelligence service that spied on citizens for political reasons. The IB affair became a major scandal, and both men were convicted of espionage and jailed. While imprisoned, he considered how to write about what he was forbidden to report as a journalist. His answer was fiction: he created Carl Hamilton, a Swedish spy who starred in ten novels and several films.
He later wrote a trilogy, later followed by a fourth volume, about Arn Magnusson, a Swedish Knight Templar. His semi-autobiographical novel Ondskan (1981) describes the abuse of his childhood, although some people close to him have disputed that account. As a columnist for Aftonbladet, he criticises American foreign policy, Israeli policy towards the Palestinians and the Swedish Security Service.
His legacy lies in the blend of journalism and fiction. In 2014 he received the Lenin Award from the Jan Myrdal Society, which praised his firmness and independence.
Key works
- Coq Rouge - berättelsen om en svensk spion (1986), the first Carl Hamilton spy novel.
- Ondskan (1981), a semi-autobiographical novel about childhood and boarding school.
- Tempelriddaren (1999), known in English as The Templar Knight, part of the Arn Magnusson series.
Curiosities
A spy born in prison
During his jail time after the IB affair he began imagining Carl Hamilton, the spy who would anchor a long run of novels.
A sting against the CIA
In 1976 he and his collaborators published an exposé of a CIA officer recruiting a spy in Stockholm, and the handler was ordered to leave Sweden.
Original Filopedia text based on Wikipedia (es) and Wikipedia (en) and Wikidata.