The Markurells of Wadköping

Born in Örebro in 1883, Hjalmar Bergman is one of Sweden's best-known and most-respected literary figures. In a series of novels and plays written during the early twentieth century, he helped modernize Swedish letters alongside luminaries such as August Strindberg, Hjalmar Söderberg, and Selma Lagerlöf. First published in 1919, The Markurells of Wadköping is widely considered to be Bergman's masterpiece. At times uproariously comic, at times darkly tragic, but always powerfully compassionate, it narrates a single critical summer's day in the lives of the inhabitants of the seemingly idyllic town of Wadköping. The professional and personal lives of the vulgar upstart Harald Hilding Markurell and the aloof aristocrat Carl-Magnus de Lorche have long been strangely intertwined, but they now face a crisis as long-concealed secrets threaten to emerge. Available in the first new English translation after almost a century, The Markurells of Wadköping is a superb yet little-known example of European literary modernism at its most accessible and dazzling.