Lars Gustafsson is a Swedish

Sweden

Sweden , officially the Kingdom of Sweden , is a Nordic country on the Scandinavian Peninsula in Northern Europe. Sweden borders with Norway and Finland and is connected to Denmark by a bridge-tunnel across the Öresund....

, poet

Poet

A poet is a person who writes poetry. A poet's work can be literal, meaning that his work is derived from a specific event, or metaphorical, meaning that his work can take on many meanings and forms. Poets have existed since antiquity, in nearly all languages, and have produced works that vary...

, novelist and scholar. He was born in Västerås

Västerås

Västerås is a city in central Sweden, located on the shore of Lake Mälaren in the province Västmanland, some 100 km west of Stockholm...

, completed his secondary education at the Västerås gymnasium and continued to Uppsala University

Uppsala University

Uppsala University is a research university in Uppsala, Sweden, and is the oldest university in Scandinavia, founded in 1477. It consistently ranks among the best universities in Northern Europe in international rankings and is generally considered one of the most prestigious institutions of...

; he received his Licentiate

Licentiate

Licentiate is the title of a person who holds an academic degree called a licence. The term may derive from the Latin licentia docendi, meaning permission to teach. The term may also derive from the Latin licentia ad practicandum, which signified someone who held a certificate of competence to...

 degree in 1960 and was awarded his Ph.D. in Theoretical Philosophy

Theoretical philosophy

The division of philosophy into a practical and a theoretical discipline has its origin in Aristotle's moral philosophy and natural philosophy categories. In Denmark, Finland, Poland, and Sweden courses in theoretical and practical philosophy are taught separately, and are separate degrees...

 in 1978. He lived in Austin, Texas

Austin, Texas

Austin is the capital city of the U.S. state of :Texas and the seat of Travis County. Located in Central Texas on the eastern edge of the American Southwest, it is the fourth-largest city in Texas and the 14th most populous city in the United States. It was the third-fastest-growing large city in...

 until 2003, and has recently returned to Sweden. From 1983 he served as a professor at the University of Texas at Austin

University of Texas at Austin

The University of Texas at Austin is a state research university located in Austin, Texas, USA, and is the flagship institution of the The University of Texas System. Founded in 1883, its campus is located approximately from the Texas State Capitol in Austin...

, where he taught Philosophy and Creative Writing, until May 2006, when he retired. In 1981 Gustafsson converted to Judaism

Judaism

Judaism ) is the "religion, philosophy, and way of life" of the Jewish people...

.

Gustafsson is one of the most prolific Swedish writers since August Strindberg

August Strindberg

Johan August Strindberg was a Swedish playwright, novelist, poet, essayist and painter. A prolific writer who often drew directly on his personal experience, Strindberg's career spanned four decades, during which time he wrote over 60 plays and more than 30 works of fiction, autobiography,...

. Since the late 1950s he has produced a voluminous flow of poetry, novels, short stories, critical essays, and editorials. He is also an example of a Swedish writer who has gained international recognition with literary awards such as the Prix International Charles Veillon des Essais in 1983, the Heinrich Steffens Preis in 1986, Una Vita per la Litteratura in 1989, a John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship for poetry in 1994, and several others. He has been nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature. His major works have been translated into fifteen languages, and Harold Bloom

Harold Bloom

Harold Bloom is an American writer and literary critic, and is Sterling Professor of Humanities at Yale University. He is known for his defense of 19th-century Romantic poets, his unique and controversial theories of poetic influence, and his prodigious literary output, particularly for a literary...

 includes Gustafsson in The Western Canon: The Books and School of the Ages (1994). John Updike

John Updike

John Hoyer Updike was an American novelist, poet, short story writer, art critic, and literary critic....

 offered high praise for Gustafsson's The Death of a Beekeeper in his collection of criticism, Hugging The Shore.

The Death of a Beekeeper, written in 1978, is Gustafsson's most critically acclaimed and commercially successful novel. Eva Stenskaer has written that it "seems so effortless yet lyrical that only an artist at the height of his powers could've produced it." Its main theme is the agony of disease, as it follows Vesslan—a beekeeper who is dying of cancer—through entries he makes on notepads. The book's innovative structure allows Gustafsson to explore identity through its expression in a variety of forms: imagination, memory and even the mundane details of life. The book's central theme is revealed by the repeated motto of the protagonist, "We never give up. We begin anew."

Gustafsson himself has described it as "A book about pain. It describes a journey into the center where pain rules—and pain can tolerate no rivals."

In 2003, Gustafsson's novel series, The Cracks in the Wall, (Sprickorna i Muren), which explores the question of identity through the "cracks" or ruptures in single personality, was made into a feature film, directed by Jimmy Karlsson.

While the problem of identity has been the defining theme of Gustafsson's writings, his social criticism has often vexed the Swedish cultural elite. As a result he is seen as a controversial writer in Sweden rather than as one embraced by the establishment.

When asked where he finds his inspiration, Gustafsson answered "I listen. I listen and I look. Creativity knows no rules. You can get an idea for a novel from a little something someone says, or just a face you see. A rabbi once told me that when God spoke to Moses in that bush, it wasn't in a thundering voice; it was in a very weak voice. You have to listen carefully for that voice. You have to be very sharp."

In May 2009, Lars Gustafsson declared that he would vote for the Pirate Party in the upcoming elections for the European Parliament

European Parliament

The European Parliament is the directly elected parliamentary institution of the European Union . Together with the Council of the European Union and the Commission, it exercises the legislative function of the EU and it has been described as one of the most powerful legislatures in the world...

.

Selected works

• Truth and Lie
• The Tennis Players
• Wool Clothings
• Family Meeting
• Sigismund
• The Death of a Beekeeper
• Stillness of the World Before Bach
• The Tale of a Dog
• Bernard Foy's Third Castling
• A Tiler's Afternoon
• Stories of Happy People
• Elegies and Other Poems
• A Time in Xanadu, 2002, 2006 (Copper Canyon Press
  Copper Canyon Press
  Copper Canyon Press is an independent, non-profit small press, specializing in the publication of poetry and located in the picturesque town of Port Townsend, Washington. Since 1972, the Press has published poetry exclusively and has established an international reputation for its commitment to...
  
  ) (translated by John Irons)

External links

• Lars Gustafsson Homepage - at the University of Texas at Austin
• http://www.bookrags.com/Lars_Gustafsson