Description
Set in neutral Sweden during the raging Second World War, this novel unfolds in two linked parts that probe what fear can do to the conscience. In the first, two people grapple with the terrifying possibility that they may have killed someone, while the second shifts to Swedish conscripts whose days are shaped by discipline, uncertainty, and the moral weight of obedience. Across both narratives, the story becomes an anti-militaristic meditation on how war-time pressures distort judgment and shrink the space for individual choice. With Dagerman’s stark, urgent style, it channels the era’s zeitgeist into a cry for personal responsibility and freedom—an act of resistance to complacency, conformity, and the easy comforts of bourgeois life.
Available Editions
paperback
Quartet
Published Jan 1, 1995
243 pages
ISBN: 0704302411
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Details
First Published
1995
Language
eng
Translation
From: swe
Content Warnings
Content and trigger warnings for The Snake by Stig Dagerman.