It was the third time my bike was stolen, and a few days later it appeared online, for sale. Maybe it was even the same thief as last time? I was so tired of society developing in this direction, not being allowed to have your things in peace, feeling unsafe, and having to walk with your head bowed in a …   ►

Before I had time to really reflect, I had impulsively bought a plane ticket to Krakow. It didn’t cost very much, thanks to the new low-cost airlines that have taken over the market, and it was a direct flight, with no annoying stopovers, to the airport named after the Polish Pope John Paul II. An unusually modernist and out-of-place airport …   ►

I had just come home from work. My new job, which I liked more and more, especially for the regular hours and the secure monthly salary. The work itself was not dissimilar to that of the average inner-city bureaucrat – typing, Excel sheets, reports, emails and phone calls interspersed with a few meetings and client visits. Whether working in semiconductor …   ►

I walked briskly along Jungfrugatan with the manuscripts in a light leather bag, which I found to be very elegant and with just the right patina. The gate revealed itself to me, sometimes it was difficult to find the strange door, but not this time. The late summer winds had hastily taken hold of the city, bringing much-needed coolness and …   ►

Can be read as a stand-alone, or as a continuation of the previous article.   I swept the glass, took out the pad again, and Archibald Iratus began to dictate: Older historians and archaeologists had a penchant for dividing epochs and events into different themes. One such theme is the idea of rise, heyday, decline and fall. This view is …   ►

This time I was about to give up, after an endless wandering through the gates of Jungfrugatan; how could it be so difficult to find an address that I had visited so many times before? Finally, with a trembling hand, I opened the unnumbered gate that led up to the Count’s floor. The old elevator squeaked more than usual. Most …   ►

I rang the bell several times, but no one answered. Sometimes he would listen to his old 78s and it would take him a while to get to the door. Just as I was beginning to despair and thinking of going home, the Count appeared in the stairwell. Dressed in a dark gray coat, elegant tie, and a shaving lotion …   ►

Archibald Iratus lived in an austere turn-of-the-century building along Jungfrugatan in Östermalm, Stockholm. A curious peculiarity of the address was its diffuse location. I could wander around for a long time before I found the unnumbered gate, and once last winter I even gave up and went home. It was as if the apartment block itself or the gate moved …   ►