Description
Book SynopsisSet 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.
Trade Review"A writer of uncommon urgency and power." —Siri Hustvedt
"Dagerman wrote with beautiful objectivity. Instead of emotive phrases, he uses a choice of facts, like bricks, to construct an emotion." —Graham Greene
"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, and the words left behind are continually transfigured by our knowledge of them, indeed acquire on this account a kind of talismanic power. A saint of this type, particularly for his compatriots, is the Swedish writer Stig Dagerman." —Paul Binding, Times Literary Supplement
Table of Contents
Contents
IntroductionPer Olov Enquist
A Burnt Child
Blowing Out a Candle
A Letter in February from Himself to Himself
Prelude to a Dream
A Letter in March from Himself to Himself
Evening Promenades
A Letter in April from Himself to Himself
Tea for Four or Five
A Letter in May from Himself to Himself
Underwater Footprints
A Letter to a Girl at Summer
A Twilight Meeting
A Letter to an Island in Autumn
A Tiger and a Gazelle
A Letter to the Father from the Son
Three o’Clock
A Torn-up Suicide Note
When the Desert Blooms
