”Wicked Wrongfulness. Heroism and Alternative Versions ofMasculinity in Hans Erik Engqvist’s Young Adult Novel Three DaysWar”. This article examines the re-evaluation of modern masculinity in theYA novel Three Days War by the Swedish author Hans Erik Engqvist (b.1934). The central argument is that the fictional representation of ChildrenPlaying War in the novel is intertwined with the imagining of competingmasculinities as well as opposing ideologies in post-war Sweden. Thus,the expression of institutionalized middle-class masculinity is contrastedto the representation of an alternative left wing working-class masculinityin opposition to social hierarchy and social inequality. Through differentallusions to heroic men and heroic behaviour in 19th century literature andAmerican Western films the novel invites the reader to evoke hegemonicmasculinity as a schema shaping both the understanding of the young charactersand their play. But the novel also interrogates this institutionalizedmyth of hegemonic masculinity and sets the main character, as well as thereader, in search of an alternative version of the heroic male.