Novel
Statarna
Not translated into English
Ivar Lo-Johansson · 1937
Synopsis
Some eighty short stories, arranged roughly in chronological order, from the time when oxen drew the plough to the arrival of tractors, portray over two centuries the statare, the day labourers of the great Swedish estates, paid mostly in kind and housed by the estate. Folk legends, dry prose, agitation narratives and trade-union history are intermingled: we follow the working days, the families, the exhausted animals, then the arrival of the agitators, the unions and the strikes.
Context
The stories appeared in two volumes, in 1936 and in 1937. They mix fiction with document: the time span covers two centuries, and the condition of the statare is analysed from a political and social angle. Together with a second collection of 1941, they fed the opinion campaign that led to the abolition of the system by the collective agreement of 1945. In French, a selection of twenty-nine stories drawn from the two collections, adapted by Philippe Bouquet, appeared from Actes Sud in 1982 under the title La Tombe du bœuf. The two Swedish volumes are online at Litteraturbanken.
Who it is for
Two volumes of short stories, in Swedish; only part of it exists in French, nothing in English. The stories can be read separately.
Prizes and reception
Regarded as one of the works that contributed most to the abolition of the statare system, and as a classic of Swedish proletarian literature.
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