Writing Truth to Power : Jonas Khemiri’s Work in Stockholm and New York

This article explores the work of Swedish writer Jonas Hassen Khemiri, of partly Tunisian origin, in terms of cultural translation and comparison between Stockholm and New York. I discuss three texts by Khemiri in different writing genres: first, an open letter to Sweden’s Minister of Justice, which went viral in 2013 and was also published in the New York Times , about racial profiling in Stockholm; second, the play I Call My Brothers , written in response to a failed terrorist attack in Stockholm in 2010 and staged in New York; third, the award‐winning novel Everything I Don’t Remember (2016b) selected as a 2016 Times Literary Supplement Book of the Year by Joyce Carol Oates. Why would Khemiri’s open letter, play, and novel that address new issues of power, stereotypes, and physical appearance in Sweden matter in the United States, with its deep‐rooted diversity? The conclusion is that the international success of these pieces has nothing to do with Sweden or an interest in Swedish contemporary life but can be understood as local variations on the global themes of terrorist crimes and racial profiling