Stig Dagerman (1923¿1954) is regarded as the most talented young writer of the Swedish post-war generation. By the 1940s, his fiction, plays, and journalism had catapulted him to the forefront of Swedish letters, with critics comparing him to William Faulkner, Franz Kafka, and Albert Camus. His suicide at the age of thirty-one was a national tragedy. This selection, containing a number of new translations of Dagerman's stories never before published in English, is unified by the theme of the loss of innocence. Often narrated from a child's perspective, the stories give voice to childhood's tender state of receptiveness and joy tinged with longing and loneliness. The title story, "Att döda ett barn" ("To Kill A Child"), is the most famous of Dagerman's short stories and among the most anthologized and oft-read stories in Sweden."Dagerman wrote with beautiful objectivity. Instead of emotive phrases, he uses a choice of facts, like bricks, to construct an emotion."¿Graham Greene
After the international success of his collection of World War II newspaper articles, German Autumn—a book that solidified his status as the most promising and exciting writer in Sweden—Stig Dagerman was sent to France with an assignment to produce more in this journalistic style. But he could not write the much-awaited follow-up. Instead, he holed up in a small French village and in the summer of 1948 created what would be his most personal, poignant, and shocking novel: A Burnt Child. Set in a working-class neighborhood in Stockholm, the story revolves around a young man named Bengt who falls into deep, private turmoil with the unexpected death of his mother. As he struggles to cope with her loss, his despair slowly transforms to rage when he discovers his father had a mistress. But as Bengt swears revenge on behalf of his mother’s memory, he also finds himself drawn into a fevered and conflicted relationship with this woman—a turn that causes him to question his previous faith in morality, virtue, and fidelity. Written in a taut and beautifully naturalistic tone, Dagerman illuminates the rich atmospheres of Bengt’s life, both internal and eternal: from his heartache and fury to the moody streets of Stockholm and the Hitchcockian shadows of tension and threat in the woods and waters of Sweden’s remote islands. A Burnt Child remains Dagerman’s most widely read novel, both in Sweden and worldwide, and is one of the crowning works of his short but celebrated career.
A startling novel of ferocious psychological acumen, which, to my mind, deserves a large, international readership... very much a book for our times' Siri Hustvedt, from the introduction 'A literary giant in Sweden, Dagerman conjures a Strindbergian atmosphere of shadowy menace in his brief, intense novel, A Moth to a Flame... This moody, death-haunted novel is well worth reading' Evening Standard In 1940s Stockholm, a young man named Bengt falls into deep, private turmoil with the unexpected death of his mother. As he struggles to cope with her loss, his despair slowly transforms to rage when he discovers that his father had a mistress. Bengt swears revenge on behalf of his mother's memory, but he soon finds himself drawn into a fevered and forbidden affair with the very woman he set out to destroy . . . Written in a taut, restrained style, A Moth to a Flame is an intense exploration of heartache and fury, desperation and illicit passion. Set against a backdrop of the moody streets of Stockholm and the Hitchcockian shadows in the woods and waters of Sweden's remote islands, this is a psychological masterpiece by one of Sweden's greatest writers. 'Dagerman wrote with beautiful objectivity. Instead of emotive phrases, he uses a choice of facts, like bricks, to construct an emotion' Graham Greene 'Dagerman can evoke such emotion in a single sentence' Colm Tóibín 'There are some writers (Kafka and Lorca immediately spring to mind) who come to enjoy the status of saint; their lives and deaths constitute statements about existence and its proper priorities. A saint of this type is the Swedish writer Stig Dagerman' Times Literary Supplement
In late 1946, Stig Dagerman was assigned by the Swedish newspaper Expressen to report on life in Germany immediately after the fall of the Third Reich. First published in Sweden in 1947, German Autumn, a collection of the articles written for that assignment, was unlike any other reporting at the time. While most Allied and foreign journalists spun their writing on the widely held belief that the German people deserved their fate, Dagerman disagreed and reported on the humanness of the men and women ruined by the war-their guilt and suffering. Dagerman was already a prominent writer in Sweden.
Stig Dagerman publicerade över tusen dagsverser. Den första skrev han på hösten 1943, den sista lämnade han in på tidningen Arbetarens redaktion dagen före självmordet 1954. Nu presenteras Dagsedlar med ett nyskrivet förord av den syriske poeten Adonis, som istället för en traditionell introduktion skrivit ett slags pendanger till Dagermans kärnfulla verser, vilka i över femtio år haft en alldeles särskild plats i svensk litteratur.
Niçin yalan söyledin dostum? Ve özlem de ara sıra tek tük kravatlarını getiriyordu: Neden mutlu olan için zaman durmuyor? Ve neden insan sevdiği yerleri hep terk etmek zorunda kalıyor? Ve neden insanın sevdiği kişiler sonunda insanı hep yalnız bırakıyor? Fakat güzel hatıralar roman değiller, onlar sadece anıları yaratırlar. Roman yazarını anı yazarından ayıran her şeyden önce onun bu hatıralara yaklaşım tarzıdır. Bu ikisinden sonuncu olanı anıların bırakıldığı yerde olayların değiş-mez ve değiştirilmez olduğunu kabul etmektir. İlki ise belleğin hilekarlığı ile ilgili bilgisinin sonuçlarına kat-lanmaktır, evet bu hilekarlığı var gücüyle desteklemek-tir. Anılar gerçekleri değil bahaneleri, üzerine kendi köprüsünü inşa ettiği suyu temsil ederler.
Véritable symbole de la littérature européenne d’après-guerre, Stig Dagerman a eu une vie marquée par les voyages, l’engagement contre les inégalités, mais aussi la dépression. À travers ces lettres inédites, envoyées à ses amis écrivains, à ses éditeurs et à ses adversaires, c’est avec une toute nouvelle lumière que nous découvrons l’écrivain suédois, dont les questionnements sur la vie et la société sont plus que jamais d’actualité.
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