Stig Dagerman

In a working-class neighbourhood 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.

A Moth to a Flame

German Autumn

Il nostro bisogno di consolazione

Samlade skrifter: Tysk höst : reseskildring

Poparzone dziecko

O vestido vermelho

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

Selected Stories

Sleet

Stig Dagerman (1923–1954) wurde 1946 von der schwedischen Zeitung "Expressen" beauftragt, Deutschland zu bereisen und ein Bild des zerstörten Landes nach dem Weltkrieg zu geben. Ein Reisebericht in 13 Stationen über Berlin, Hamburg, das Ruhrgebiet, Frankfurt, Heidelberg und München, aber auch über die dazwischenliegenden ländlichen Regionen, über Zugfahrten, Politikerauftritte und Gerichtsprozesse entstand in diesem regnerischen Herbst 1946, der geprägt ist von Ruinen und Hunger, unterdrückter Kontinuität nationalsozialistischen Denkens und dem erhofften Aufbruch durch die alliierte Demokratisierung. Stig Dagerman begegnet den Menschen auf seiner Reise nie mit moralischer Überlegenheit – sondern mit Interesse und Mitgefühl, im Versuch, die gesellschaftliche wie persönliche Situation jedes Einzelnen zu verstehen. In jenem Herbst erlebt Stig Dagerman mit seinem zweiten Roman in Schweden gerade den Durchbruch: Seine Frau schickt ihm die begeisterten Rezensionen, und er schämt sich im Angesicht der Zerstörung und des Leidens für den Erfolg. Paul Berf hat die Reiseberichte nicht nur in ihrer ganzen Beschreibungsdichte und Gedankenvielfalt in ein schwingendes, unverstelltes Deutsch übersetzt, sondern auch ergänzend eine Auswahl aus den Briefen getroffen, die Dagerman – teilweise auf Deutsch verfasst – von der Reise an seine Angehörigen in die Heimat schickte. Der Bericht des schwedischen Ausländers über das Deutschland der Stunde Null, dessen äußere Konflikte und innere Spannungen gibt uns einen einzigartigen Einblick in eine Zeit, in der nicht ausgemacht war, ob dieses Land jemals wieder auf die Beine kommen würde.

Deutscher Herbst

Autunno tedesco

Depuis la découverte, en 1981, de ce texte où Stig Dagerman, avant de sombrer dans le silence et de se donner la mort, fait une ultime démonstration des pouvoirs secrètement accordés à son écriture, le succès ne s'est jamais démenti. On peut donc, aujourd'hui, à l'occasion d'une nouvelle édition de ce " testament ", parler d'un véritable classique, un de ces écrits brefs dont le temps a cristallisé la transparence et l'inoubliable éclat.

Notre besoin de consolation est impossible à rassasier

A nossa necessidade de consolo é impossível de satisfazer

av Stig Dagerman

Tysk höst

roman

Ormen

Il viaggiatore

The Snake

Processen ; Anarkismen ; Vår nattliga badort ; Den dödsdömde

As sete pragas do casamento

Alman Sonbaharı

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 Novel

A Burnt Child

Stig Dagerman

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