Jan Myrdal

Jan Myrdal (19 July 1927 – 30 October 2020) was a Swedish author known for his strident Maoist, anti-imperialist and contrarian views and heterodox and highly subjective style of autobiography. As a young child, Myrdal followed his parents to the United States shortly before the Second World War. After the German occupation of Norway in 1940, the family feared that a Nazi invasion of Sweden could be imminent and decided to return. Jan initially protested, perceiving himself at that time as a naturalized American; he would later stress the role that his childhood in New York had in shaping his intellectual evolution.

Relations between Myrdal and his parents were troubled, as he would later relate in several books. At sixteen, he dropped out of high school to focus on writing and politics. He initially had little success as a journalist and an author, which he attributed in part to his political views and to the influence of his parents, both of whom were leading figures within Sweden's ruling Social Democratic party.Having adopted Marxist-Leninist ideas already in the mid-1940s, Myrdal was for some years a member of Democratic Youth, the youth wing of Swedish Communist Party.