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Wedding Worries

by Stig Dagerman

Introduction by J.M.G. Le Clézio

Translated by Paul Norlen and Lo Dagerman

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  • Format: Softcover
  • ISBN: 978-1-56792-615-6
  • Size: 5.5 x 8.5"
  • Pages: 350
  • Published: 2018

One day, and one night, on a rural Swedish farm during which the young daughter of the farmer marries the considerably older village butcher. In a burlesque and often comical style, Stig Dagerman explores the eternal themes of existential loneliness and a longing for connection through the many characters. It is also here that he, for himself, stakes out a different path toward inner freedom. This was Stig Dagerman’s last novel, by many considered his best. This edition includes an introduction by Nobel Prize winner, J. M. G. Le Clézio.

For more about Wedding Worries, read Dagerman’s essay Wedding Worries and Other Upsets where he reflects on his writing process.

 

By turns devastating, antic, and lewd, Dagerman’s final novel is a forceful testament to his skill as a writer. —Kirkus Reviews

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Stig Dagerman was one of the most prominent Swedish authors of the twentieth century. He became prominent in literary circles at an early age; he edited the youth paper Storm at nineteen and became cultural editor of the daily newspaper Arbetaren at twenty-two. He published his first novel the same year and enjoyed phenomenal success during the following five years. At his height of fame, soon after divorcing his wife to marry the famous actress Anita Bjork, he suddenly fell silent. He was found dead of carbon monoxide inhalation in his car in 1954. He remained popular after his death, and his work continues to be widely read and translated around the world.

J.M.G. Le Clézio is a French-Mauritian author who was awarded the 2008 Nobel Prize in Literature. The author of over forty works, Le Clezio won the 1963 Prix Renaudot for his novel Le Procès-Verbal. The Nobel Prize committee described him as an “author of new departures, poetic adventure and sensual ecstasy, explorer of a humanity beyond and below the reigning civilization.”

Paul Norlen has translated books by a number of Swedish authors, ranging from Nobel Prize winner Selma Lagerlöf to crime fiction writer Leif GW Persson. In 2004 he was awarded the American-Scandinavian Foundation Translation Prize. He lives with his family in Seattle.

Lo Dagerman, the daughter of Stig Dagerman in his marriage to actress Anita Björk, has been instrumental in reintroducing her father’s work in the United States. Most recently she worked with Paul Norlén on the translation of Wedding Worries, and together with American journalist Nancy Pick authored The Writer and the Refugee about the genesis of Stig Dagerman’s play Marty’s Shadow. Lo co-produced the play in New York and has, together with her son Dan Levy Dagerman, a film forthcoming based on this production. She manages www.dagerman.us and a FB page with news about Stig Dagerman’s texts in the US and around the world.