AGORA: When Peace Comes
Thella Johnson on her novel Peace and how to live after war
The end of the war did things to people.
The street once again exercised its power over pedestrians. But the houses were no longer the same when you passed them. Some houses weren’t at all: instead, empty craters gaped in the earth where some Tupolev had dropped its annihilating load. Soon people would start moving into the town in droves. But right now, these empty craters. Fragments of lost structures and information. It was a void that needed filling.
(from Peace by Thella Johnson, translation by Nichola Smalley)
In her AGORA talk, Thella Johnson, author of the 2023 novel Peace, discusses the voids to be filled after a war. What do we do when peace finally comes? How do we live? And can we ever imagine a world where war exists only in past tense?
Speaker
Thella Johnson, journalist, author, musician
Thella Johnson (b. 1979) is an award-winning journalist and author. She is also known as a musician. Johnson, who is from Stockholm, has a Swedish father and a Finnish mother, and she continues to have a strong connection to Finland and the Finnish language. She worked in Finland as a correspondent between 2014 and 2017.