Series B: English Translations of Works of Scandinavian Literature
1 primary work • 2 total works
Book 46
August Strindberg (1849-1912) is best known outside Sweden as a dramatist, but he was also a prolific writer of novels, short stories, essays, journalism and poetry - as well as a notable artist and photographer. Although he spent many years abroad, Strindberg was born, grew up and died in Stockholm and "The Red Room" is perhaps the quintessential Stockholm novel. A satire of the rapidly changing society of the 1870s, it was Strindberg's first novel and marked his literary breakthrough: 'it offers', he said, 'a panorama of a society I don't love and which has never loved me'. It contains some of the great set-piece scenes in Swedish literature, a gallery of unforgettable caricatures in the spirit of Dickens, humour, pathos and satirical targets as apt now as they were then. "The Red Room" is often called Sweden's first modern novel, and it remains modern almost a century and a half later.
August Strindberg (1849-1912) is best known internationally as Sweden's greatest dramatist. Less well known outside Sweden is the range of his other writings--novels, short stories, essays, journalism, and poetry. This novella, translated into English here for the first time, was written in the autumn of 1888. Set in the 1690s, in a province of Sweden recently annexed from Denmark, the novella tells the story of Andeas Torner, a Swedish academic who finds himself spending the summer holiday with his family at the manor house of an eccentric gypsy. A conflict arises in which Torner must resort to despicable deeds to renounce the gypsy. Strindberg. in parading his prejudices so nakedly, is simultaneously revealing many of the aspects of his age that would lead to tragic consequences in the century that followed.