Born in Sweden in 1919, I studied law and foreign languages as preliminaries to a long career in the Swedish foreign service, which took me to eight countries (Spain, France, Soviet Union, United States, Brazil, Colombia, Venezuela and Morocco, with, towards the end, the posts of Ambassador to Venezuela 1963-66, Spain 1973-76 and Morocco 1976-83). I have participated in the General Assembly of the United-Nations in 1970 as a member of the Swedish delegation and in the Conference in Santiago of UNCTAD (United-Nations Conference of Trade and Development in 1971 as vice-chairman of the Swedish delegation under the chairmanship of the then minister of Commerce, Gunnar Lange. In the years 1966 to 1970 I was entrusted by the Governments of Sweden, Denmark and Norway with negotiating modifications of the agreements concluded between the three Scandinavian countries and the Soviet Union and Japan in the field of air transportation. I retired from active service in 1983 and took up residence in Morocco in the coastal town of Al-`Ara'ish (Larache).

In the years I passed in Spain and Brazil I had the opportunity to undertake in co-operation with a writer from each of these countries the translation of theatrical works, namely Miss Julie and The Stronger, by the Swedish author August Strindberg, to Spanish and Portuguese.

After embracing Islam in 1986, I took upon myself the task of interpreting the Koran in the modern Swedish language, giving in addition to the translation of the Arabic text, printed alongside and to the left of the original Arabic, the learned comments of Leopold Weiss, an Austrian who became a Muslim under the name of Muhammad Asad and who is the author of a masterly interpretation of the Koranic text, The Message of THE QUR'AN, comments which I translated with his permission from its original English. My interpretation was published in December 1998 with the title Koranens budskap by the publisher PROPRIUS, of Stockholm; a second edition, revised and with the addition of some annexes, has just been launched on the market.

At present, I am translating the Sahih of Imam Muslim, having prepared for this work an introductory chapter, explaining the sunnah, the second source of Islam after the Koran, consisting of utterances by the Prophet Muhammad (God's blessings and peace be with him) and stand-points that he adopted with regard to problems submitted to him, all these utterances etc. recorded and classified and subjected to painstaking investigations in order to discard all material, which did not bear clear evidence of authenticity, seen as a set of rules and principles to which every sincere convinced Muslim must adhere. The Sahih of Muslim is one of the most important compilations of such utterances and stand-points by the Prophet (Gbpwh), designated with the Arabic word ahadith, which as the title indicates are classified as "sound" (authentic).

We, the editor and I, are planning a new, pocket-book edition of Koranens budskap which would leave out the original Arabic text but preserve the commentary, useful, nay necessary for an understanding of the koranic discourse, and we hope that the funds indispensable for such an undertaking will accrue.

The editor's address is: PROPRIUS FÖRLAG, Box 26111, 100 41 STOCKHOLM tel. +468-660 96 02, 468-21 33 57, fax 468-660 97 49. Email: <info@proprius.se>