Stig Dagerman
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'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 Toibin
'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
'This searing tale of bereavement and loathing feels all too relevant today' Guardian -
The first U.S. edition of Dagerman's account of postwar life in Germany
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A haunting masterpiece of Scandinavian literature-now published for the first time in the United States
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Set in a working-class neighborhood in Stockholm, A Burnt Child revolves around a young man named Bengt who falls into deep, private turmoil with the unexpected death of his mother. Written in a taut and beautifully naturalistic tone, it remains Stig Dagerman's most widely read novel and is one of the crowning works of his short but celebrated career.
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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. This selection, containing a number of new translations of Dagerman's stories, is unified by the theme of the loss of innocence.
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The Games of the Night and Other Writings
Stig Dagerman
- Quartet books
- 1 Septembre 1986
- 9780704300248
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