Collection: Birgitta Trotzig

Birgitta Trotzig is one of the 20th century’s most important Scandinavian voices. She grew up in Gothenburg and later in Kristianstad. From 1954 she lived with her family, first in Italy, then in France, and it was during this period that Birgitta Trotzig converted to Catholicism. Her years abroad put her in closer contact with European modernism and with the resistance to the Algerian War. On her return to Sweden, she began working as a critic and writing her debut, Ur de älskandes liv. She published the successful prose poetry collections Bilder (1954), Ett landskap (1959), and En berättelse från kusten (1961). Her novella Sveket (1966) is characterized by a search for the living word in a time of darkness. Her cultural criticism expresses a political commitment and a demand for the right to create without being tied down to ideologies, as well as the notion of an artistic language as a possible counter-language to the language of power, all evident in her essay collection Jaget och världen. Employing a language full of legend and paeans, Birgitta Trotzig lends a voice to the vulnerable and the tormented. She was elected to the Swedish Academy in 1993.