Viktor Banke's debut novel is a report from parallel society, about how a lawyer begins his journey with an unwavering belief in the rule of law and then encounters a new reality. A very valuable novel, writes Maria Schottenius.
An excerpt from Dagens Nyheter, 2026-09-19 14:37
Article's original address: https://www.dn.se/kultur/omskakande-roman-om-advokaten-och-de-unga-mordarna/
Compelling novel about the lawyer and the young murderers
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Novel
Viktor Banke
"What was once fire"
Albert Bonniers Publishing, 295 pages
It began with the refugee stream in 2015. The young lawyer Viktor Banke then traveled to Hungary and saw how a barbed wire fence was built against Croatia to prevent refugees from crossing the border. He then became a committed asylum law jurist and when Swedish refugee policy changed shape and hardened, he wrote the book "Andrum. About the theft of a refugee crisis and stolen."
Here Viktor Banke moved away from the acute refugee issue to another burning societal problem: The juvenile criminal boys, who are recruited by warring gangs for contract killings.
In "What was once fire" we follow a criminal defense lawyer who begins his work as a jurist with an unwavering belief in the legal system. He takes cases with young boys whom he initially believes he can help. The cheerful, round-faced addict Sancho whom everyone likes, the gang criminal Amir, Jounis who gets 14 years for murder, and the 13-year-old Abbas whom he met as a 9-year-old.
The novel is also peppered with names of artists and writers. Not always very well handled in the depiction, but still: The lawyer calls and greets them as often as he can when they are in prison, receives their calls, tries to get them to reason a little sensibly, has contact with their parents. There is a lot of brother and man and fist bumps. His clients are children and he wants them well, to get them on the right track, not just do the job and arrange for the mildest sentences possible. But it wears down his strength to have hope and illusions. And to work like a madman around the clock. He gets sick, has sleep problems and moves with rapid steps towards burnout.
As is suggested, the flame in "What was once fire" will fade. A title that refers to Ann Jäderlund's poetry collection "As if once it were an angel" from 1988. The novel is also peppered with names of artists and writers. Not always very well handled in the depiction, but still: Per Lagerkvist, Peter Dahl, Hans Gedda, Stig Claesson, Edvard Munch, Tomas Tranströmer, August Strindberg, Olle Baertling, Sara Mannheimer, Torsten Renqvist, Stig Dagerman, Czeslaw Milosz, Kjell Westö, Evert Lundquist, Harry Martinson. I wonder what it means. Decorations? Or a cry for help in this valley of shadow? Can a poor burned-out lawyer find strength and solace from culture in his daily work with injustices?
The young murderers are hard to help, they are tightly bound in their gangs with drugs, debts, and acts of revenge. When they come out they will soon be trapped again, a new round and then another. With a known outcome, for most of it.
Something becomes clear in the courtroom when Amir smiles a kind of "streetwise grin" at the one who is on trial for shooting him. Amir is obviously not just a victim. He has "in some respect solidarized himself with the perpetrators rather than the system". It turns out that the clients are perversely interested in who is driving whom, who shot whom. The conflicts follow "as if it were the Premier League".
The lawyer states: "The least common denominator is morality. They have a different morality than the rest of society."
And it feels truly disheartening. Parallel society roars forth with other rules and priorities where the common societal morality is completely irrelevant. Viktor Banke puts the hardest, most decisive questions on the high wire; "if the state is no longer the stronger party and the client is no longer the weaker party, what am I then?" The state should have the capital of violence, but is it still changing?
Regardless of some shortcomings in style and depiction, this is a very valuable novel. Compelling, thought-provoking, terrifying.
Read more texts by Maria Schottenius and more reviews of current books