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Martin Birck’s Youth

Downloads: Under 100
First published: 1901
Pages: 125

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About this book

Hjalmar Soderberg drew on his own Stockholm boyhood for this melancholy portrait of a sensitive young man coming of age at the close of the nineteenth century. In quiet, impressionistic scenes the novel follows Martin Birck from a devout childhood through school, the slow loss of his faith, a dull clerk's post, and a tender but shadowed love affair. Little happens in the way of plot; Soderberg's art lies in mood, in the ache of passing time, and in Martin's clear-eyed disenchantment with the promises of religion and ambition. First published in 1901, it stands among the finest examples of Swedish fin-de-siecle prose.

About the author

Hjalmar Söderberg

Hjalmar Soderberg (1869-1941) was a Swedish novelist, short-story writer, playwright, and journalist, prized as one of his country's finest stylists. Working in a spare, ironic, melancholy manner, he is best known for the novels Doctor Glas and The Serious Game and for his sharply observed Stockholm sketches.