Sven Holm – Termush (1967, translated by Sylvia Clayton 1969)

“Our fear is no longer a fear of death but of change and mutilation. We have not thought this through and cannot talk about it, but in those moments when we are able to escape from our own personal needs the picture becomes clear to us.

It is impossible to sustain this thought. We cut it down; we put a ring around it in order to forget it.”

Sven Holm was a Danish author of literary fiction and playwright, who was widely respected and awarded in his native Denmark. His one work of speculative fiction, Termush, was published in 1867, and translated into English by Sylvia Clayton in 1969. Termush has now been brought back into print in a lovely new edition by Faber Editions, and it could not feel more timely. Holm’s novella is a post-apocalypse dystopia that stands shoulder to shoulder with the work of J. G. Ballard or Michael Moorcock. Set in the aftermath of a nuclear war, in which the rich survivors are holed up in the luxury hotel Termush, the novella expertly portrays both the moral emptiness of the survivors as they turn against those who have survived outside the safety of the hotel, and their increasing discombobulation at living in a world transfigured by the invisible poison of radiation. In the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic, and in a world in which the gap between the poor and the wealthy is ever increasing, Termush feels disconcertingly prophetic. 

Termush is set in the aftermath of a nuclear apocalypse, and is told by a nameless narrator who is one of the rich people who was able to buy a space at the luxury seaside hotel Termush in the event of a nuclear disaster. The end of the world came, and the narrator and the other rich clientele safely waited it out in an underground bunker, and are now being installed in their luxury rooms by the management. They have supplies of fine food and drinks, a DJ playing soothing ambient music, and even the occasional boat ride when the weather allows to keep them entertained. Meanwhile a reconnaissance party of hotel staff, wearing the latest in anti-radiation protection gear, embarks to find out what’s left of the world outside. Meanwhile the narrator and the other hotel guests must get used to their strange new existence. The deceptive serenity is soon shattered by the arrival of survivors from outside, those who have lived through the nuclear apocalypse without the benefit of safe shelter and luxury accommodation. As the hotel guests and the management debate what to do about the influx of the sick and the dying, the atmosphere in the hotel gets progressively worse. 

Holm’s novella brings to mind the work of J. G. Ballard, particularly the descent into siege-like mentality undergone by the inhabitants of the tower in High Rise (1975), or the surreal psychic landscapes of his postapocalyptic works The Drowned World (1962), The Drought (1965) and The Crystal World (1966). Like a Ballard protagonist, the narrator must adjust to a frightening new reality in which his sublimated desires emerge from the collapse of his “civilised” mind. And like Ballard, Holm favours a chilling matter-of-factness that is perfectly reflected in the banality of luxury hotel corridors that hide depravity under the veneer of high class. Much of the power of the novel comes from how Holm effortlessly brings the reader into a monstrous situation in which the privileged weigh the worth of the lives of the poor, the suffering, the disenfranchised against how much it will personally inconvenience them. In Termush, the sick are brought in through the back door, and kept in the library where their presence won’t disturb the guests’ dining experience. Various guests are sympathetic to the plight of the survivors in principle, but draw the line when helping them could cut into the resources that are earmarked for the guests’ own pleasure. In the wake of a global pandemic which has disproportionately hit the poor and the working class while the rich get richer, Holm’s horrifying parable feels like a damningly accurate portrayal of the greed and selfishness of the rich in the face of disaster. 

The end of the world in Termush comes by nuclear Armageddon, and if the fear of nuclear apocalypse has been superseded today by fears about climate change and pandemics, Holm’s vision of a world transfigured by an invisible poison is surprisingly applicable here too. Much of the book is given over to surreal descriptions, as the narrator imagines the invisible contagion that could kill him without him even knowing until it’s too late. 

“Did we believe that we would find a wooden table transformed into spongy pulp, the surface of a mirror into impalpable phosphorescent light? Did we imagine that the door-handle would crumble beneath our touch, or the glass window-panes collapse into a heap of burning silica, that cloth would become as rigid as steel plates and a bunch of fruit would splinter in our hands like china? Did we expect that the molecules of the air would be as sharp as crystals and that our own skin would turn into something dark and glazed, nothing to do with ourselves at all?

We did not envisage quite such a ruthless change in our environment. But one of the reasons for our feelings of weakness may be that things have retained their outward appearance, now that the disaster has happened. Without knowing it, we put our faith in the disaster; we thought our panic would be justified if we had to use symbols as violent as those our imagination needed earlier.

But we came back from our stay in the shelters to find a world changed less than a summer thunderstorm would have changed it. And now when we have a profound need for imagination and insight, none of us seems to have the power to satisfy it.”

Here the narrator’s imagination, his expectations of apocalypse and how the end of the world would look, are not capable of preparing him for the lived reality of the experience. In some ways the more violent and surreal imaginings of his dreams would be less terrifying than the actuality, a reality that looks and behaves exactly as it did before except now it can kill us. This same combination of alienation, fear, dread and survivor’s guilt is familiar to those of us who have lived through the Covid-19 pandemic, but also those of us who are continuing to live our lives whilst the lives of others are disrupted by the ravages of climate change in the global south. Termush hits so hard because it’s a direct challenge to us as readers. The apocalypse, in many ways, is still unfolding. Do we, in fear, batten down the hatches and refuse entry to immigrants and refugees? Or do we welcome the survivors and share what we have? Holm’s dark and disturbing masterpiece reminds us that we will have to live with the decisions that we make.