O Tempo de Sua Graça

Nobel Prize in Literature 1974

Eyvind Johnson (1900-1976) is one of the greatest storytellers in Swedish and 20th-century European literature. Of humble origins, Johnson was self-taught. His early novels, autobiographical in nature and set in the desolate regions of northern Sweden, were later collected in the cycle... Romanen om Olof (Olof's Novel, 1934-1937); the subsequent novel trilogy, Krilonromanen (The Romance of KrilonHis work (from 1941-1943) is characterized by a profound bitterness towards Nazism and a firm opposition to totalitarianism. This is especially evident in his works published after the Second World War, such as... Strändernas Svall (The Return to Ithaca, 1946), Drömmar om rosor och eld (Dream of Roses and Fire, 1949) and The Time of His Grace (1960), which will express, through the historical novel, his truest art and its deepest theme: the tireless defense of the individual against the violence of History. In 1974, with the poet and novelist Harry Martinson, he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature "for a narrative art of wide horizons, which crosses countries and eras in the service of freedom".