Jerker Virdborg. Black Crab

This novel by the young Swedish writer Jerker Virdborg (b. 1971) was published in 2002 and immediately became a bestseller. This is due both to its tense, gripping plot and the book's pacifist stance. The action takes place in a fictional future, in a fictional Scandinavian country. It's wartime. Four soldiers are tasked with skating across the frozen sea in one night to reach a base isolated from the mainland. But the fictional nature of the external action is offset by the concreteness of the protagonists' inner experiences, transforming this gripping thriller into a subtle psychological novel.