The Serious Game

Deeply unsettling, in the way dreams are.
Margaret Atwood

Sweden, late 19th-century.

A work of tremendous insight, tenderness and gentle irony, The Serious Game tells a compelling story of bright young bohemians in love and struggling to free themselves from the snares of conservative society.

Arvid, an ambitious and well-educated young man, meets Lydia, the daughter of a landscape painter, during an idyllic summer vacation and he falls in love. Lydia, however, has other suitors, and Arvid is frightened of being tied down by his emotions. Years later and trapped inside loveless marriages of convenience, they struggle to rekindle the promise of their romance with bitter and tragic results.

First published in 1912, this book is a lost classic by one of the greatest writers in Swedish literature.