Hjalmar S-derberg, 1869-1941, was a civil servant and then a journalist before becoming a full-time writer. His novels include Martin Birck's Youth (1901), Doctor Glas (1905) - widely regarded as his masterpiece - and The Serious Game (1912). S-derberg's play Gertrud (1906) was made into a film by Carl Dreyer.
[A] searing masterwork of Northern European literature. The retrieval of Doctor Glas in English is a bracing gift to hungry readers -- Susan Sontag Splendid... Soederberg [is] a marvellous writer * The New Yorker * [Doctor Glas] not only sketches the light and shadows of its time, but maps territory still being explored by the writers of today. It is a volcano, shaking, about to erupt * The New York Times Book Review * Elegant, vigorous, and tightly-knit... One of those marvellous books that appears as fresh and vivid now as on the day it was published... It occurs on the cusp of the nineteenth and the twentieth centuries, but it opens doors the novel has been opening ever since -- Margaret Atwood, from the introduction