Charms is an important writer in my personal history. The first book recommendation I ever gave Flea was his “Konsten är ett skåp”, and the first cup of coffee we had together was to talk about our mutual flabbergasted enjoyment of this Russian absurdist. Now we’ve been together for fifteen years and are expecting our second child. Charms has some small part in this. So when Flea gave me this collection of his letters, recently published in Swedish for the first time, it was a pretty romantic thing.

The publisher calls this “a treasure of cultural history”, but I think that’s pushing it a bit. Charms was pretty much a nobody during his life (not Stalin’s type of writer), and little of his correspondence has been saved for the afterworld. It all feels very random. But there are some very funny letters in here – and it’s also pretty obvious how Charms just couldn’t refrain from being witty, even when he seems to have been trying not to, for instance when writing a shy love letter or begging for help from a publisher. ( )