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US-POLITICS-BIDEN

In “<a href="https://amzn.to/487VJ3H" target=_blank>Termush</a>,” the Danish writer Sven Holm’s 1967 novella, the worst has happened: Nuclear war has engulfed the planet, and it’s assumed that anyone not already dead shortly will be. But some small portion of the population — rich, paranoid or desperate — still lives in the relative luxury of a grand hotel estate called Termush. They’ve paid deposits against the apocalypse for years, and the hotel’s management has put their money to extensive use, digging bunkers, installing radiation sensors, and putting aside years’ worth of food, drink and medicine.

The unnamed narrator has been able to register for Termush “because of my private capital.” The lucky few have waited out the war in the hotel’s bunkers. If the horizon flared with mushroom clouds and black rain fell on Termush’s grounds, they went unseen and unheard by the narrator and their peers: “None of us had expected that it would happen so painlessly. I mean that both literally and metaphorically.”

Now, after six days in the bunkers, they reflect and observe, interrupted by occasional radiation alarms that send them back underground. The narrator’s affect is introspective and anesthetized; “everything is still so new that what happened can neither be comprehended by reason nor has it yet been able to penetrate the subconscious.” They seem most alive when imagining the world outside Termush and what it might become after the catastrophe: “The bee turns its sting on itself; the corn starts to grow downwards and the roots of the trees rise up to search for water from the air.”

Names and proper nouns are few and far between. We learn the name of one guest, the narrator’s occasional companion Monica. Art by Klee and by Monet clashes on the narrator’s wall. The hotel is situated somewhere on the Atlantic coast, though the country goes unidentified. If we choose to assume the Danish coast and a male narrator, it’s because the author is a Danish man.

The occasional outbreaks of emotion among the guests are managed with sedatives, and the management strives for normalcy by staging boat outings and a party celebrating the anniversary of the hotel’s founding. The hotel’s security men spend their days hosing down and decontaminating the grounds. In the mornings they collect the night’s deposit of fallen birds, lest the sight of a dead creature offend the guests or its lingering radiation poison them. Even after a world-ending war, the rich are different from you and me.

As the days wear on, factions develop within the hotel’s society, not always organized around the most noble principles. At one point, the characters bond over their loathing for a deceitful fellow guest: “This unity abolished the painful distance between individuals; hatred and repudiation gave them the strength they needed.” Survivors from the outside world begin to make their way to Termush, at first starving, radiation-poisoned and at death’s door. Later arrivals are armed, angry and organized. What should the residents do? Can they help? Should they drive away the intruders? What little assistance the narrator’s peers and the hotel management initially offer the new arrivals is premised on keeping the paying guests unbothered and the refugees out of sight, but circumstances soon deteriorate. Is a second, smaller apocalypse en route?

The English translation of “Termush,” by the acclaimed but now-obscure novelist and critic Sylvia Clayton (1926-1994), appeared in Britain two years after the book’s Danish publication; this edition is the first American one. A new foreword by “Annihilation” author Jeff VanderMeer situates the book in Holm’s career as “a highly honored literary realist,” teases out its similarities to the British “New Wave” science fiction of the 1960s and reflects on its enduring, if shape-shifting, topicality. As he puts it, “Our fear of radiation and immolation has led to climate crisis fear, which has led to pandemic fear.”

In the more than 50 years between its writing and its American publication, “Termush” has lost none of its power to disturb. Holm, born in 1940, was a young man when he created the hotel and its inhabitants; he lived until 2019, long enough to witness the climate crisis. In this short book, he created something timeless. The enduring relevance of “Termush” will depress many readers, but the clarity of its prose and the intensity of its vision inspire.

“There is of course no danger of the guests feeling secure,” the narrator reflects, whatever pains the management may take. Readers of “Termush” will feel similarly perturbed.

Matthew Keeley is a freelance writer who has written for Reactor and the Los Angeles Review of Books.

By Sven Holm. Translated from the Danish by Sylvia Clayton

Matthew Keeley

In Sven Holm’s ‘Termush,’ the wealthy emerge after nuclear war

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