Jan Myrdal, radical and rebellious Swedish writer, dies at 93

Jan Myrdal, a radical left Swedish writer who chronicled his lifelong rebellion against his parents, both of whom received Nobel Prizes, and whose books extolled the virtues of communist regimes, died Oct. 30 in Varberg, Sweden. He was 93. Myrdal was the oldest of three children of Gunnar and Alva Myrdal, who were at the center of international political and intellectual life for decades. Gunnar Myrdal, who was awarded the Nobel Prize in economics in 1974, helped design Sweden’s social welfare system, and his 1944 book “An American Dilemma: The Negro Problem and Modern Democracy” was cited a decade later by the U.S. Supreme Court in its Brown v. Board of Education ruling outlawing segregation in public schools. Alva Myrdal, a U.N. official and Sweden’s onetime ambassador to India, received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1982 for her work advocating nuclear disarmament.