Klas Östergren

Klas Östergren

Klas Östergren in 2007.
Born Klas Östergren
(1955-02-20) 20 February 1955
Stockholm, Sweden
Occupation Novelist, screenwriter, translator
Nationality Swedish
Period 1975–present
Genre Literary
Notable works
Spouses
Children 4

Klas Östergren (born 20 February 1955) is a Swedish novelist, screenwriter, and translator. On 28 February 2014, the Swedish Academy announced that Östergren had been appointed a new member of the Academy, succeeding Ulf Linde on seat 11. Östergren was formally installed as a member on 20 December 2014.[1] In 1999, he was nominated for his country's top film award, the Guldbagge Award and, in 2005, received the grand prize bestowed by the country's premier literary society, Samfundet De Nio.

Biography

Klas Östergren in 2014.

Östergren was born in 1955 on Lilla Essingen in Stockholm.[2] He was the youngest of four siblings.[3] His father was Finnish and his mother was Swedish.[4] He went to secondary school at Södra Latins gymnasium.[5]

Klas Östergren was soon to turn twenty years old when his first novel, Attila, was published in 1975.[3] He gained critical acclaim and high readership five years later with the novel, Gentlemen. As a writer of screenplays and teleplays, he was honored in 1999 when Veranda för en tenor [Waiting for the Tenor], the screen treatment (which he co-wrote with Lisa Ohlin) of a short story from Med stövlarna på och andra berättelser, was nominated for Sweden's equivalent of the Academy Award, the Guldbagge. He is also one of his country's most highly regarded literary translators, having published a Swedish-language version of J. D. Salinger's The Catcher in the Rye and also having translated a two-volume edition (issued in September 2008) of the plays of Henrik Ibsen.[6]

From 1982 to 1989, Klas Östergren was married to Swedish actress, Pernilla Wallgren, who subsequently continued her career using the name Pernilla Östergren. They became the parents of a daughter, Agnes; and following their divorce and Pernilla's marriage to director Bille August, she appeared, using her new professional name, Pernilla August, in two films for which Östergren wrote the screenplays. The first, 1996's Jerusalem, adapted from the novel by Selma Lagerlöf, was directed by her husband, Bille August, and the other, Offer och gärningsmän, was a 1999 miniseries directed for Sweden's national television broadcaster, SVT, by Tomas Alfredson. His second and current wife is Cilla, with whom he has three children, Åke, Gösta, and Märta.

The 1980 novel Gentlemen was filmed in 2014 by director Mikael Marcimain.[3]

Bibliography

Filmography

Writer

Actor

References

  1. ↑ Ny ledamot i Svenska Akademien, press release from Svenska Akademien, 28 February 2014 (Swedish)
  2. ↑ "Klas Östergren – En gentleman med twist". DN.SE.
  3. 1 2 3 http://www.svenskaakademien.se/akademien/de_aderton/klas_östergren
  4. ↑ Östergren, Klas; Farran-Lee Stephen (2007), Östergren om Östergren: i samtal med Stephen Farran-Lee (in Swedish), Stockholm: Bonnier, ISBN 9789100111052
  5. ↑ "»Vart jag än går så träffar jag dårar«". Fokus – Sveriges nyhetsmagasin.
  6. ↑ New edition of the plays of Henrik Ibsen, translated by Klas Östergren (on the website of Norstedts, Sweden's oldest publishing house)

External links

Cultural offices
Preceded by
Ulf Linde		 Swedish Academy,
Seat No.11
2014– 		Succeeded by
incumbent
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