Stig Dagerman, born in 1923, spent his childhood on a small farm in Älvkarleby where he lived with his paternal grandparents. His unwed mother gave birth on the farm but left shortly thereaftrer, never to come back. He will meet her only when he is in his twenties. Dagerman's father, a traveling day laborer, eventually settled in Stockholm. His son joined him there at the age of eleven.

Through his father, Dagerman came into contact with Anarchism and its ideological offspring, Syndicalism, and joined the Syndicalist Youth Federation. At nineteen, he became the editor of "Storm", the youth paper, and at twenty-two he was appointed the cultural editor of Arbetaren ("The Worker"), then a daily newspaper of the Syndicalist movement. It was in the fertile ground of the newspaper world that he met fellow writers and relished in polemic writing. In addition to editorials and articles, Dagerman penned over a thousand daily poems, many highly satirical, commenting on current events. He called "Arbetaren" his "spiritual birthplace".

Dagerman's horizons were greatly expanded by his marriage in 1943 to Annemarie Götze, an eighteen-year old German refugee. Her parents, Ferdinand and Elly, were prominent Anarcho-Syndicalists, and the family escaped Nazi-Germany to join the center of the movement in Barcelona. As Spanish fascists brutally crushed the Anarcho-Syndicalist social experiment there, the Götzes fled through France and Norway, with Hitler's army at their heels, to a neutral Sweden. Dagerman and his young wife lived with his parents-in-law, and it was through this family, and the steady stream of refugees that passes through their home, that Dagerman felt he can sense the pulse of Europe.

In 1945, Stig Dagerman was twenty-two and published his first novel Ormen (The Snake). It was an anti-militaristic story with fear as its main theme, channeling the war-time zeitgeist. Positive reviews earned him the reputation as a brilliant young writer of great promise. He left "Arbetaren" to write full-time. The following year, Dagerman published De dömdas ö (The Island of the Doomed), completed over a fortnight during which, he says, it is as he "let god do the writing". Using nightmarish imagery, this was an allegory centered on seven shipwrecked people, each doomed to die, each seeking a form of salvation.

Critics compare Dagerman’s works to Franz Kafka, William Faulkner and Albert Camus. Many see him as the main representative of a group of Swedish writers called “Fyrtiotalisterna” (“the writers of the 1940s”) who channel existentialist feelings of fear, alienation and meaninglessness common in the wake of the horrors of World War II and the looming Cold War. Articles

In 1946, Dagerman became a Swedish household name through a newspaper travel log from war-torn Germany, later published with the title Tysk Höst (German Autumn). Rather than blaming the German people for the war’s atrocities, calling them crazed or evil, Dagerman portrayed the human ordinariness of the men and women who scraped by in the ruins of war. To him, the root of disaster lay in the anonymity of mass-organizations that obstruct empathy and individual responsibility, qualities without which the human race is threatened by extinction.

::“I believe that man’s natural enemy is the mega-organization

::because it robs him of the vital necessity to feel responsible for his fellow-man,

::restricting his possibilities to show solidarity and love

::and instead turns him into an agent of power,

::that for the moment may be directed against others,

::but ultimately is directed against himself.”

The short story collection Nattens lekar (The Games of Night), published in 1947, met with high acclaim. Many of the stories were set on his grandparents’ farm, and are written from a child’s perspective. Dagerman used a tender naturalistic style that appeals to a wide audience. This same year his first play “Den dödsdömde” (“The Man Condemned to Death”) opened in Stockholm to rave reviews.

The most famous of Dagerman’s short stories, “Att döda ett barn” (“To Kill A Child”), exemplified the strong influence of film on his writing. In image after image, it portrayed in riveting detail how a series of perfectly ordinary events can be a prologue to horror.

In 1948, he wrote three more plays and published his third novel Bränt barn (A Burnt Child). The story was a psychological account of a young man’s infatuation with his father’s mistress, and was written in a tight, naturalistic style.

Dagerman only wrote one more novel: Bröllopsbesvär (Wedding Worries), published in 1949, regarded by some as his best. In this novel, he returned one final time to the setting of his grandparents’ farm and characters to describe the human condition, including a search for forgiveness and salvation. In this book, Dagerman, who throughout his career experimented with different literary styles, made ample use of stream-of-consciousness as a way of penetrating a character.

After his early and rapid successes, expectations kept rising, not least his own. Dagerman struggled with depression and an onset of writer’s block. He became restless in the now suburbanized Götze family, and was drawn to the medium of theater. As a playwright, and even a one-time director, he met friends and lovers within the theater world, leaving his family for periods at a time. Eventually, Dagerman broke away for good to live with and later married the celebrated actress Anita Björk with whom he had a daughter. But the break proved difficult, emotionally and financially. Dagerman felt guilty leaving his young sons, and took on mounting debt to support his first family. The assumption was that the debt will be paid when he publishes his next book.

Battling deepening depression and a debilitating writer’s block, Dagerman penned a magazine essay “Vårt behov av tröst är omättligt” (“Our need for consolation is insatiable”) about his thoughts of suicide. He also wrote “Tusen år hos gud” (“A Thousand Years with God”) — part of a new novel he was planning — which signaled a turn to a more mystical bent in his writing. In spite of his struggles, Dagerman continued to deliver his daily satirical verses for “Arbetaren”, the last one published on November 5, 1954, the day after his suicide.

1. Books

The Snake. Translation and introduction by Laurie Thompson. Quartet Encounters, London, 1995. ISBN 0-7043-0241-1"The Snake seems to be a collection of short stories until, in a brilliant denouement, disparate threads are brought together to reveal the underlying thematic structures. Dagerman writes with equal skill from the point of view of both sexes, and through them he examines wider issues of social justice and the psychology of fear." (book jacket)

Island of the Doomed. Translation by Laurie Thompson. Quartet Encounters, London, 1991. ISBN 0-7043-7001-8"SD's novel penetrates the dark regions of the soul and is a haunting, powerful allegory about the state of modern man. Its potent themes include the existentialist argument over meaning and reality, and the confrontation of political ideals represented by the main protagonists." (book jacket)

The Games of Night. Translation by Naomi Walford and introduction by Michael Meyer. Bodley Head, London, 1959; Lippincott, Philadelphia and New York, 1961; Quartet Encounters, London, 1986. ISBN 0-7043-0024-9"Much of SD's best writing is to be found in his short stories. His work is original and daring. A critic has written of him: "Everything was briefer, more fiery and more sharply felt for him than for other people. His books exploded from him." (book jacket)

German Autumn. Translation and introduction by Robin Fulton. Quartet Encounters, London, 1988. ISBN 0-7043-0047-8"Undoubtedly SD's most unusual assignment as a journalist was when a Swedish newspaper asked him to go to Germany in the autumn of 1946.German Autumn gathers together these articles, and remains one of the most unusual documents of life in Germany immediately after the fall of the Third Reich." (book jacket)

A Burnt Child. Translation by Alan Blair and introduction by Laurie Thompson. Chatto & Windus, London, 1950; Morrow, New York, 1950; Quartet Encounters, London, 1990. ISBN 0-7043-0125-3"A Burnt Child is about the emotional reactions of a family to the mother's sudden death. The principal drama ia played out between the son, his father, the father's mistress, and the son's young fiancee. SD explores the complex tensions within this group with compassion and brilliant psychological insight." (book jacket)

2. Short stories, a play and prose excerpt

2.1 Translations by Steven Hartman:

"Our Need for Consolation". (unpublished)

"Thousand Years with God". (unpublished)

"The Surprise". Southern California Anthology 8, Los Angeles, CA: University of Southern California, 1996. 60-66

"Men of Character". Southern Review 32:1. Baton Rouge, LA: Louisiana State University, 1996. 59-79

"Salted Meat and Cucumber". Prism International 34:2. Vancouver, BC: University of British Columbia, 1996. 54-60

"Sleet". Confrontation 54/55 (Double Issue). New York, NY: Long Island University, 1994. 53-62

"The Games of Night". Black Warrior Review 20:2. Tuscaloosa, AL: University of Alabama, 1994. 107-117

"In Grandmother's House". Quarterly West 38. Salt Lake City, UT: University of Utah, 1994. 160-167

"To Kill A Child". Grand Street 42. New York, NY, 1992. 96-100

2.2 Other Translations:

"Pithy Poems". Translation by Laurie Thompson. The Lampeter Translation Series: 4. Lampeter, Wales. 1989.

"God Pays a Visit to Newton, 1727". Translation by Ulla Natterqvist-Sawa. Prism International, Vancouver, BC, October 1986. 7-24

"Bon Soir". Translation by Anne Born. The Swedish Book Review supplement. UK, 1984. 13-

"The Man Condemned to Death". Translation by Joan Tate. The Swedish Book Review supplement. UK, 1984. 21-

" The Condemned". Translation by Henry Alexander and Llewellyn Jones. Scandinavian Plays of the Twentieth Century. Third Series. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1951.

3. Recent (English language) adaptations to film and music

"To Kill A Child" (TRT 10 min, 2003, Swedish with English subtitles) by Bjorne Larson and Alexander Skarsgard. Narrated by Stellan Skarsgard.

"The Games of Night" (TRT 23 min, 2007, English) by Dan Levy Dagerman. Screenplay based on translation by Steven Hartman.

"No One Can Reinvent the World" ("Jorden kan du inte gora om"). Poem translated by Steven Hartman. Recorded by The Real Group (title withheld; anticipated release 2009)