Fragments. Portents, foreshadowing.
Slowly gathered, sorted. Coalescing. A stream — small, then surging.
That was the experience of reading "1947: Where Now Begins," Elisabeth Åsbrink's nonfiction account of a momentous year.
It was a year that brought us flying saucers and the shattering of the sound barrier. It saw the founding of the CIA, the end of the British Empire and the first computer bug — literally, a moth lodged in a room-sized electromechanical brain.
But it is Europe that is at the heart of Åsbrink's book. A continent devastated by world war, where genocidal monsters were being put to trial while the homeless, friendless refugees they created roamed the land.
Some of the monsters were escaping to South America and to Scandinavia, both places where wealthy fascists were eager to see the German experiment in Aryan superiority continue.
Åsbrink, a Swede, collected much of her material from 365 daily editions of Sweden's largest newspapers. Some items appear trivial yet loom important with seven decades of hindsight. Others can be seen immediately as significant.
The year and the book begin slowly, with a feeling of disconnection. But as they roll on, Åsbrink's fragments take shape as a coherent form, much as an artwork that creates one large picture by putting together many small ones.
