Description

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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

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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.