"I am something in-between": Class and Colonialism in Gustaf Hellström's Bildungsroman Love and Politics

This article analyses Gustaf Hellström’s novel Kärlek och politik [Love and Politics], published 1942, both from a class perspective and a postcolonial one, showing how they interact with each other together with gender. Following the novel’s hero, Stellan Petreus, and his development during his stay in London 1908-11 as a foreign correspondent, the analyses shows how his identity as a Swede and as a liberal middle class man is problematized, when he is confronted with class conflicts and social injustices in England and with British colonial politics, especially towards Ireland and India. The analyses also shows that Stellan Petreus uses his writings, both as a journalist and as an author of fiction, as a way to handle the conflicts he is faced to. Another way to handle the conflicts is to define his position as a compromise between (mellanting).