Novel
Tjärdalen
Not translated into English
Sara Lidman · 1953
Synopsis
One summer, in Ecksträsk, in northern Västerbotten. Nils has built a tar kiln that is to bring his family enough to get through the winter; on the day he is to light it, he finds it destroyed, and under the debris lies Jonas, known as the Fox, the village drunkard and strikebreaker, his leg crushed. Nils loses his reason. Some villagers carry the injured man to his home: should the doctor be called for a good-for-nothing? The question falls on Petrus, the village's smooth talker, who would like to uphold a higher morality than the others and will have to live by it himself.
Context
It is its author's first novel, published by Bonnier in 1953, and the critics welcomed it with one voice; Ivar Harrie, in Expressen, hailed a new voice with a tone recognisable among all others. It brought into literature the village of Ecksträsk, which reappears in the later novels, and a prose built on the Bible and dialect, whose dialogues are written in the speech of northern Norrland. It was translated into French as early as 1959. In 2016 Riksteatern made a musical theatre production from it.
Who it is for
A short novel, in Swedish or in French. The dialogues in a northern dialect are rough even for a Swedish reader.
Prizes and reception
The book that made its author, at thirty, a star of literature; Dagens Nyheter saw in it in 2003 a book that changed Swedish literature.
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