<i>1793</i>. Realismo distopico nella Stoccolma di Niklas Natt och Dag

During the twenty-first century, dystopia has occupied a dominant position in the literary market. Nowadays ‘dystopia’ almost automatically compels readers to project their mind towards inscrutable futures. Such a connection may risk weakening its essential focus on the pressing issues that frame contemporary times. Niklas Natt och Dag’s debut novel, 1793 , can be seen as a text that redefines dystopia as a space capable of exploring not only future worlds, but also those that belong in the past. Combining features of crime fiction and the historical novel, my claim is that 1793 displays eighteenth-century Stockholm as a dystopic setting. The purpose of this paper is therefore to test the hypothesis that the concept of dystopia can be used as a theoretical framework to study events and places from the past, not only catastrophic scenarios from the future.