Guest of the ilb 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004
Lars Gustafsson was born in Västerås, central
Sweden, in 1936. He completed his philosophy studies at the
University of Uppsala and Magdelen College, Oxford, with a dissertation
on "three extremists in the philosophy of language" (Friedrich
Nietzsche, Alexander Bryan Johnson and Fritz Mauthner). He
published his first novel, 'Vägvila : ett mysteriespel på prosa',
(Engl: Rest on the Way – A Mystery Play in Prose), at the age of only
21. Gustafsson himself dates his actual debut from 1959, when
'Poeten Brumbergs sista dagar och död' (Engl: Last Days and Death of
the Poet Brumberg) appeared. From 1960 Gustafsson was editor, and
from 1965 to 1972 chief editor, of the Swedish literary journal
'Bonniers Litterära Magasin'. After this he travelled extensively
and accepted various guest lectureships including in West
Germany. The offer of a DAAD scholarship brought him to Berlin in
1972. Gustafsson had already made a name for himself
internationally as a writer and academic when he decided to change his
life dramatically in 1982 by emigrating to the US, remarrying, and
converting to Judaism. He moved to Austin, Texas, and became an
American citizen in 1983. He held a position as adjunct professor
of Germanic Studies at the University of Texas and still lives in
Austin where he teaches philosophy at University. His
extensive work has won many awards, including the Prix Européen de
l’essai Charles Veillon (1983), the Swedish Academy’s Bellman Prize
(1990) and the Swedish Pilot Prize (1996). Since 2000, he has
been a member of the 'Academy of Fine Arts' in Munich. In
Germany, Gustafsson first gained critical acclaim with his poetry
during the 1970’s. His poems focus on questions which he also
tackles as a novelist and essayist. The search for identity,
moral consciousness, the relationship between personal experience and
self-awareness, juxtaposed with a philosophically founded scepticism
towards language, are the main themes of his work. Since his
novels that would later form the series 'Sprickorna i muren' (Engl: The
Cracks in the Wall), Gustafsson is regarded internationally as one of
Scandinavia’s best-known authors. Here the author uses crime
motifs to present the fragility of a world view which relies on
expressions such as 'good' and 'evil' and concepts of personal
integrity. Yet the world is only out of joint for the hero of the
first book 'Historien med hunden' (1994; Engl: The Thing About the
Dog). Lars Gustafsson is a master of the most varied literary
forms. His most recent publications have been the poetry
collection 'En tid i Xanadu' (2002) and the novel 'Dekanen' (2003). In
2005/06 he was Writer in Residence at Tübingen University, Germany.
© international literature festival berlin
Lars Gustafsson online: www.utexas.edu/depts/german/faculty/gustafsson.html | 
