Per Wästberg, Swedish Academy Chair, on Stig
There are perhaps only three contemporary Swedish authors of the highest caliber who have reached the wider world: the poets Gunnar Ekelöf and Tomas Tranströmer, and Stig Dagerman, who in spite of his death at 31 lives on in new editions and research, especially in France where he is considered a Nordic existentialist in the […]
For One Day A Year, Let’s Make Believe….
In February 1953, Stig pens one of his daily occasional poems (Sw. dagsedlar) for publication in The Worker. He titles it One Day A Year. Very similar in tone to John Lennon’s Imagine. Stig’s poem is well-known in Sweden, inspiring, among other things, the Dagerman Award given annually by the Stig Dagerman Society (Read more). EN DAG OM ÅRET […]
On Seeking And Offering Refuge
Flykten valde oss Fågeln väljer flykten. Vi valde den icke.Flykten valde oss. Därför är vi här.Ni som ej blev valda – men ändå frihet äger,hjälp oss att bära den tunga flykt vi bär! Bojan väljer foten. Vi valde att vandra.Natten var barmhärtig. Nu är vi här.Ni är för många, kanske den frie trygge säger.Kan […]
CRITIC’S BEST BOOK PICK 2014: Dagerman’s Short Fiction
Swedish book critic Stina Otterberg picks NATTENS LEKAR Collected short fiction by Stig Dagerman, preface by Colm Toíbín (Norstedts, 2014). DN.se 12/13/14 DAGERMAN’S RESISTANCE OFFERS CONSOLATION Review (excerpt translated by Lo Dagerman), DN.se 12/6/14 In these days of Nazi-flavored racism in the Swedish parliament*, we would like to summon Stig Dagerman from the dead to let his social commentary in […]
To Stig’s Memory Nov 4, 2014
by Lo Dagerman – preface to Chilean Mar y Tierra’s anniversary publication. Everything significant that I experience, all that fills my life with a sense of wonder—meeting with a lover, a caress on my skin, help in distress, eyes reflecting moonlight, sailing on the open sea, the joy a child inspires, a shiver in the […]
Self Deception In A BURNT CHILD
A question from a reader: “I just read A Burnt Child, and I have been thinking quite a lot about it. I can see that it is partly about self-deception but I can’t describe how properly. Could you possibly help me, by summarizing what in the book makes it clear that it is about self-deception?” Here is my […]
Stig Into Turkish
by Halil Gôkhan, Writer and Editor of KAFEKÜLTÜR in IstanbulIf I remember correctly, the first time I heard Stig Dagerman`s name was in 2005 when I learnt that the Turkish writer and journalist Yasar Kemal had received an award from the Swedish Stig Dagerman Society. Kemal got this award in 1997 with the motivation that he had used […]
Meeting Stig
By Michael Meyer, from his introduction to The Games of Night, 1959. I first saw Stig Dagerman in 1948, when he came to speak in a debate at Uppsala University. He was then 25 years old and already had three novels, three plays, a book of travel reportage and a collection of short stories to his credit. […]
In the Forest of Paradoxes
J.M.G. Le Clezio Extract from J.M.G. Le Clezio’s Nobel Lecture December 7, 2008 Shortly before I received the—to me, astonishing—news that the Swedish Academy was awarding me this distinction, I was re-reading a little book by Stig Dagerman that I am particularly fond of: a collection of political essays entitled La Dictature de chagrin (The Dictatorship […]
Reading A BURNT CHILD
PURITY IS A HARD TASK MASTER by Brita Green, Ph.D. I don’t remember exactly what year it was when we, a group of young Swedes, all read Stig Dagerman and in particular his novel A Burnt Child, but it would have been some-time in the early 1950’s. We were a dozen or so school friends of […]