August Strindberg is considered to be the father of modern literature in Sweden. He is the most important representative of the so-called Modern Breakthrough in Swedish literature, a literary movement that broke with the nationalistic and Romantic tradition in literature in the 1870s and advocated a focus on contemporary social problems and debate, written in a modern everyday language. No other Swedish writer has been equally influential, both nationally and internationally, in nineteenth- and twentieth-century literature as Strindberg. His drama Fröken Julie (1888; translated as Countess Julie, 1912, but best known as Miss Julie)--focusing on the emerging class struggle in Sweden, portrayed through a sexual encounter between a young woman from the nobility and her father's valet during a midsummer celebration--has proven to be a classic: it is still his most frequently performed play, both in Sweden and abroad. Fröken Julie is also one of...