To Kill a Child (Paperback)

Stig Dagerman

ISBN 10: 1567924468 / ISBN 13: 9781567924466

Published by David R. Godine Publisher Inc, Lincoln, 2013

About this Item

Paperback. This is a superb collection of stories by Stig Dagerman, one of the most talented writers of Sweden's post-war generation. 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, "To Kill A Child", is the most famous of Dagerman's short stories and among the most anthologized and oft-read stories in Sweden. 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. This selection, containing a number of new translations of Dagerman's stories, is unified by the theme of the loss of innocence. Shipping may be from multiple locations in the US or from the UK, depending on stock availability.

Seller Inventory # 9781567924466

Bibliographic Details

• Title: To Kill a Child (Paperback)
• Publisher: David R. Godine Publisher Inc, Lincoln
• Publication Date: 2013
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1567924468
• ISBN 13: 9781567924466
• Binding: Paperback
• Condition: new

About this title

Synopsis

A selection of stories from Sweden’s greatest post-war writer. “Dagerman wrote with beautiful objectivity. Instead of emotive phrases, he uses a choice of facts, like bricks, to construct an emotion.”―Graham Greene

This collection includes a number of new translations, never before published in English, unified by the theme of the loss of innocence. Often narrated from a child’s perspective, the stories give voice to receptiveness and joy tinged with longing and loneliness.

Alice McDermott writes in the preface to this edition, “An imagination that appeals to an unreasonable degree of sympathy is precisely what makes Dagerman’s fiction so evocative. Evocative not, as one might expect, of despair, or bleakness, or existential angst, but of compassion, fellow-feeling, even love.”

Stig Dagerman’s fearless, moving stories have been compared to the best short fiction of such luminaries as James Joyce, Anton Chekhov, and Raymond Carver. You’ll find yourself holding your breath in wonder as you read, grateful to Dagerman for the gift of these stories.

At once remote and intimate in tone, these works by one of the great twentieth-century writers come fully to life in a remarkable translation by Steven Hartman.

About the Author

Stig Dagerman was one of the most prominent Swedish authors of the twentieth century. His two titles with Godine are Sleet and Wedding Worries.