When International's Gay Glans was 15 years old, he skipped school for a week – to read Vilhelm Moberg's book "Soldier with Broken Rifle" like a madman.
Looking back, I dare say that my week of skipping school meant more for my education than elementary school, he writes.

Essay | Gay Glans, photo Thony Glans

In my family, we have either been factory or construction workers, or working-class wives. My first years in the workforce were spent at a fixture factory in Tyringe in northern Skåne, from just sixteen years old.

When I was fifteen, in the mid-60s, and received Vilhelm Moberg's book Soldier with Broken Rifle from my older brother Thony, it began a strong reading relationship that still holds.

Vilhelm Moberg described a world I recognized: class society with its injustices. Valter Sträng, the main character in Soldier with Broken Rifle, described it as: "class differences were noticeable everywhere, in all corners and crevices of society."

Instead of going to school, I simulated a sick week the following week. Not because of laziness, but because I had to read the extensive book to its end.

Soldier with Broken Rifle made an unforgettable impression on me as I lay in bed reading. I felt related to Valter Sträng. He was young like me, a working-class child like me. I followed his development from class-conscious young socialist to convinced antimilitarist and the discomfort he experienced facing the impending catastrophe of World War I.

Despite warning signs, Valter Sträng harbored hopes that the war could be prevented, or at least stopped, through the Second International's antimilitarist policy – that no worker would shoot another worker, regardless of which nation they belonged to. Through massive civil resistance, general strikes, and international solidarity, the warmongers would be forced to fall. Valter Sträng did not doubt that it was possible.

When the Second International gave way to nationalism and war rhetoric, Valter Sträng was devastated.

For me, it was a clarifying reading experience. Moberg explained the world catastrophe in a way that no history lesson had succeeded with. Through his book, I got the image of the collapse of the Second International as a decisive factor behind the 1914 catastrophe.

The book contributed strongly to making me an antimilitarist and opponent of nationalism. I remember thinking: hell no, I won't do the draft.

I said nothing about my reading experience to my teacher. Instead, I refused to read The Girl in the Tuxedo by Hjalmar Bergman.

No teacher would tell me what was good reading. No reading they suggested reached up to the books I read from Vilhelm Moberg, Ivar Lo Johansson, and the early working-class author Maj Hirdman.

Looking back, I dare say that my week of skipping school meant more for my education than elementary school, except for the first years when I learned to read and write.

Today, we see with concern how mobilization hysteria again permeates society. Even the Left Party, with its historical roots in the working movement's antimilitarism, is about to make the mistake that made Valter Sträng devastated – to align itself with nationalism and mobilization.

Sixty years later, I still carry Valter Sträng's broken rifle in bed.