A Free event at Scandinavia House, NY:

Stig Dagerman was one of Sweden's most prolific and acclaimed post-war writers. As writer, playwright, and literary critic Graham Greene noted: “Dagerman wrote with beautiful objectivity. Instead of emotive phrases, he uses a choice of facts, like bricks, to construct an emotion.” A literary phenomenon during his brief career, Dagerman died tragically young, but his writing continues to attract new generations of readers around the world. Now, for the first time, his body of work is being published in the United States with four new volumes to date.

Novelist Siri Hustvedt, translator Steven Hartman, and PEN Translation Committee Chair Susan Bernofsky read and discuss Stig Dagerman’s writings with moderator Ann Kjellberg, editor of the literary magazine Little Star. The author's daughter, Lo Dagerman, will introduce a short documentary, Our Need for Consolation (directed by Dan Levy Dagerman, 2012), featuring actor Stellan Skarsgård, and based on Dagerman's classic text of the same name.

Co-presented by the Consulate General of Sweden in New York and PEN American Center, in association with the American Scandinavian Society of New York.