["Stad i ljus" ("Town in Light") (1928)] is the apologia of a young Swedish writer, hungry and wretched in an illuminated and festive Paris. Eyvind Johnson described it as a chapter out of his own life—"two hundred pages of diatribes, reflections, prose-poems, and cries of woe". His hero declares that his generation has seen its revolutionary faith disintegrate into despair in the shadow of a generation of war-profiteers. He looks hopelessly for the meaning in the miserable life he has lived:

I want to arrive at my century. I mean, I want to know what it is like. Do we know what it is like? No. And I want to arrive at myself … I want to know who I am!

Not surprisingly "Stad i ljus" has often been compared to Hamsun's "Sult" ["Hunger"], whose hero finds himself in a similar predicament. But while Hamsun was compelled by his...