Stories of Happy People
The "happy people" in these 10 short stories, originally published in Sweden in 1981, include a research engineer who is the only person in the town of Trummelsberg to know the latitude and longitude at which he lives and an elderly woman in a nursing home in Koping who struggles with strong memories and the imminence of death. In "What Does Not Kill Us, Tends to Make Us Stronger," a Swedish professor of literature living in Houston contemplates "what Saint-John Perse had called 'time crests,' the experience of finding yourself in a civilization at the moment when it reaches its fullest development, when its most secret energies come into bloom." Exploring the 20th century time crest appears to be Gustafsson's goal; if at the end of these stories the reader is stirred but has the feeling that something has been left unanswered, it is only because the questions are so wise.Copyright 1986 Reed Business Information, Inc.--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.