A Burnt Child (Bränt barn)
A young man experiences inner turmoil and rage following the death of his mother. He falls in love with his father's mistress, and they start a clandestine relationship. Dagerman conceived the story while struggling with a journalistic assignment in France. He wrote the novel, he said, "… isolating himself in a locked room in a sleepy French village with a continent between the author and those he had betrayed."
"Just moments ago we saw the desert of our life in all its terrifying vastness. Now we see that the desert is in bloom. The oases are few and far between, but they do exist."
—Stig Dagerman, A Burnt Child
Editions and Translations
- A Burnt Child/Bränt barn (1948). Translation by Alain Blair and introduction by Laurie Thompson. Chatto & Windus, London 1950; Morrow, New York, 1950; Quartet Encounters, London, 1990. ISBN 0-7043-0125-3.