Johannes Lichtman, ”SUCH GOOD WORK”

The year is 2015. Jonas might be an excellent teacher if he weren’t addicted to drugs. Instead, at age twenty-eight, he’s been fired from yet another creative writing position after assigning homework like, visit a stranger’s funeral and write about it. Jonas needs to do something drastic and, as a dual American-Swedish citizen, he knows Sweden is an easy place to be a graduate student—and a difficult place to be a drug addict.

He goes to Malmö, a city trying to cope with the arrival of tens of thousands of Middle Eastern refugees. Driven by an existential need to “do good,” Jonas volunteers with an organization that teaches Swedish to the desperate and idling young refugees. But a friendship with one young refugee, Aziz, will force Jonas to question whether “doing good” can actually help another person.

A resplendent work of autofiction, Johannes Lichtman's Such Good Work uses dark humor and pathos to consider the complexity of being a good person in our modern world, as well as the effects of nationalism and identity politics in a time when conversations around migrant policies are vital and omnipresent.