The Novels of August Strindberg

The first comprehensive English-language study of Scandinavia's modernist titan as novelist. Eric O. Johannesson's 1968 University of California Press hardcover broke new ground by seriously examining Strindberg's fiction - previously overshadowed by his revolutionary plays and tumultuous biography. Johannesson, a professor of Scandinavian literature, demonstrates how Strindberg's novels pioneered stream-of-consciousness technique, psychological realism, and autobiographical fiction that influenced Joyce, Kafka, and modern European literature.

The study examines major novels like "The Red Room" (Sweden's first modern novel), "By the Open Sea" (exploring isolation and madness), and the experimental "Inferno" (documenting Strindberg's psychological crisis). Johannesson's analysis arrived during 1960s academic expansion when universities established Scandinavian studies programs and sought authoritative English scholarship. University of California Press's publication reflects that moment when American academia embraced international modernism beyond French and British traditions. For students of European literary modernism or collectors of Scandinavian literature studies, this remains essential - the book that established Strindberg's novels as worthy of the same serious attention his plays received, revealing a writer whose formal innovations matched his theatrical genius.