In this Book
- Island of the Doomed
- Book
- 2011
- Published by: University of Minnesota Press
In the summer of 1946, while secluded in August Strindberg’s small cabin in the Stockholm archipelago, Stig Dagerman wrote Island of the Doomed. This novel was unlike any other yet seen in Sweden and would establish him as the country’s brightest literary star. To this day it is a singular work of fiction—a haunting tale that oscillates around seven castaways as they await their inevitable death on a desert island populated by blind gulls and hordes of iguanas. At the center of the island is a poisonous lagoon, where a strange fish swims in circles and devours anything in its path. As we are taken into the lives of each castaway, it becomes clear that Dagerman’s true subject is the nature of horror itself.
Island of the Doomed is a chilling profile of terror and guilt and a stunning exploration—written under the shadow of the Nuremberg Trials—of the anxieties of a generation in the postwar nuclear age.
Table of Contents
- Foreword: The Star of Myself
- pp. vii-x
- THE CASTAWAYS
- pp. 1-13
- The Thirst of Dawn
- pp. 3-32
- The Paralysis of Morning
- pp. 33-63
- The Hunger of Day
- pp. 64-94
- The Sorrow of Sunset
- pp. 95-124
- The Obedience of Twilight
- pp. 125-153
- The Longing of Evening
- pp. 154-184
- The Fires of Night
- pp. 185-206
- THE STRUGGLE OVER THE LION
- pp. 207-338