Synopses & Reviews
Synopsis
This collection of stories written over a period of more than thirty shows the deep seriousness and astonishing versatility of Par Lagerkvist's imagination. From the commonplace charm of the title story, to the searing futuristic satire of The Children's Campaign, to the disquieting fantasy of The Lift That Went Down to Hell, we see that Lagerkvist admits no settled boundaries between fact and fable. In this he is a poet for whom fantasy permeates the actual and reality can take on the dimensions of the fabulous. Life is, to him, a system of dark paradoxes; but there is also the good -- a quiet, everyday radiance that mankind always had difficulty noticing and setting a value on.
About the Author
Pär Lagerkvist, playwright, poet, essayist, and novelist, received the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1951. The Dwarf, long considered a masterpiece of modern literature, was first published in 1945. Mr. Lagerkvist died in Sweden in 1974.
Table of Contents
The marriage feast.--Father and I.--The adventure.--A hero's death.--The venerated bones.--Saviour John.--The experimental world.--The lift that went down into hell.--Love and death.--The basement.--The evil angel.--The princess and all the kingdom.--Paradise.--The children's campaign.--God's little travelling salesman.--The masquerade of souls.--The myth of mankind.--On the scales of Osiris.--The strange country.