| Summary: | This thesis aims to examine how the renowned swedish writer and critic Olof Lagercrantz wrote about communist China under Mao Zedong's leadership in the years 1970–1971. Lagercrantz served as editor-in-chef and as cultural director on one of Sweden's major daily newspapers, Dagens Nyheter, between 1951 and 1975. He travelled to China in 1970 as one of the first European reporters to get admission after the cultural revolution. This series of articles about China also changed the image of Lagercrantz, afterwards he was referred to as Maoist. The Swedish daily press referred to him as an "operetta Chinese" and "ching-tjopp chinaman" and the myth that he came back from China to the DN-office wearing a Mao suit, is still in circulation. The paper concerns the problem of trying to understand a culture on its own terms. In the survey, I give a picture of how Lagercrantz wrote about China, and explore some of the contexts of the texts produced. It's easy to judge in hindsight, but my ambition has been to try to find some kind of understanding of, or insight into what was communicated. Making a representation of a country and its people involves many issues and problems and in the paper I examine these through a postcolonial perspective inspired by Edward Said's book Orientalism (1978). Furthermore, I will examine the contexts that may have been important for Lagercrantz's work, and what might have influenced the image Lagercrantz gave of China and what authoritative position he occupies in his articles.
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