As a novelist, playwright, essayist, and newspaper columnist Per Olov Enquist is one of the dominant Swedish authors of the second half of the twentieth century. He published his first novel in 1961 and has written prolifically since then. In contemporary Sweden, Enquist is recognized for his multifaceted talent: he is a leading dramatist whose plays have been performed throughout Europe and the United States, a major novelist whose works have been translated and admired worldwide, and one of the central figures in Swedish literary and cultural life.

Intellectually rooted in Scandinavian history, culture, and politics, Enquist first established himself as a novelist and columnist, but he gained unusual renown in Scandinavia and Europe with his documentary novel Legionärerna: En roman om baltutlämningen (1968; translated as The Legionnaires: A Documentary Novel, 1973). He continued combining his prose fiction with his public role as a literary and cultural...