The Dwarf (originally ‘Dvargen’ in Swedish) by Par Lagerkvist is one of the crown jewels of literary works that deal with evil. It was written during World War II and was published in 1944. The book tells about an evil dwarf who cares only for his prince, literary researchers guess this is The Prince Machiavelli based his famous book on. He despises what people like and love except from misery and war. The book tells about the preparation for a war as the dwarf is ordered to kill the prince’s enemies with poisoned wine but he also kills the prince’s wife’s lover. In the end the dwarf is locked in the dungeon, never to be released but he is certain that the prince would call on him some day because the prince needs his dwarf. Such an ending seems to harm the idea of the book, but there is a clue that the dwarf never existed but in the mind of the prince.

Par Lagerkvist was born in a simple religious house in Sweden in 1891. He published his first work in 1912. Throughout his life, he published poems, novels and plays that were very successful. His works are based on the tension between religion and heretics. He defines himself as “a religious heretic”. In 1924 he published Onda Sagor (The Tales of the Devil); most famous among them is the story ‘The Elevator who went Down to Hell’. During the 30s he became increasingly interested in the Fascism that swept through Europe. When The Dwarf was published he was compared to Jonathan Swift in his ability to describe the human evil.  Some Israeli readers have compared him with Agota Kristof who we shall discuss in an up-and-coming post.

In 1951 he won the Nobel Prize for Literature. There is an anecdote about his winning: apparently he was supposed to win the award in 1949 and again in 1950 but he voted against himself as a member of the Swedish Academy giving the 1949 prize to Falkner and the 1950 to Bertrand Russell. When he finally won in 1951 he was asked if he had a message and he replied: “I have no message. All that I have to say is included in my work.” He died in 1974. But to this day, his creation is considered to be most original. We can learn much from his literary solutions, it has been said that in his writings he dealt with most of the problems that stand before a writer.