A Burnt Child

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Bränt barn (A Burnt Child) was the first book I read by Stig Dagerman—I think in 1949. It overwhelmed me, and for a long time I wrote my own school essays in the same style that I imagined was his. I read everything by him after that, but nothing was like A Burnt Child.

What was so compelling about this novel about a young man who had an affair with his father’s new wife? Surely it wasn’t pornography. And why has this of all his novels divided critics, even today? Olof Lagercrantz, for instance, scarcely mentions it in his classic biography of Dagerman. And the novel has often been accused of having too much Oedipus complex, psychoanalysis, and Freud.

Yet even after sixty years I still cannot see why the book has been overlooked; I must have missed something. I had read, and still read, a remarkably realistic, clear, and poignant story about a young man who insidiously resembles myself.

I still do not understand the criticism. A Burnt Child is truly the Modest Masterpiece. _________

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