Torgny Lindgren often credits his hometown of Norsjö in the northern Swedish region of Västerbotten and the dialect spoken there as the inspiration for the subject matter of his work and the manner of its telling. Lindgren has achieved international status as a writer by relaying these oral, regional tales into universal investigations into the human condition. His work examines such fundamental and pervasive aspects of life as the nature of power and exploitation and the dimensions and limitations of love and the body. In the last decades of the twentieth century Lindgren emerged as a forceful and prominent writer, becoming in 1991 a member of the prestigious Swedish Academy, which determines the recipient of the Nobel Prize for literature. Possessing elements of both Franz Kafka and Harold Pinter, Lindgren's style is distinctly suited to depict the ambiguities and absurdities of the present day.

Lindgren was...