To Kill a Child (short story)

To Kill a Child

Author	Stig Dagerman
Original title	Att döda ett barn
Language	Swedish
Genre	Short story
Set in	Sweden
Published	1948
Publisher	National Society for Road Safety
Original text	Att döda ett barn at Swedish Wikisource
Translation	To Kill a Child at Wikisource

To Kill a Child (Swedish: Att döda ett barn) is a short story by Stig Dagerman. It was published in 1948 and was likely the most famous of Stig Dagerman's texts. The short story can be found in the Swedish posthumous collections Vårt behov av tröst (1955) and Dikter, noveller, prosafragment (1981).

Background

The short story was written in 1948^[1] for the National Society for Road Safety in an attempt to slow down the traffic and decrease the number of traffic accidents.^[2]

Plot

In a scaled and clear prose, but with a fateful feel, the everyday life of the involved characters is depicted before one of them unintentionally hits a small child with a car. The readers know what will happen from the very start and the author works with a narration technique called planting. In the short story there exists very few details of the people involved which means that anyone can imagine themselves as the characters and relate to them. In the short story there are multiple plot lines since two courses of events happen simultaneously.

Adaptations

Two films have been made based on the short story, To Kill a Child (1953) and To Kill a Child (2003). The latter was directed by Alexander Skarsgård.

References

1. "To Kill a Child". Svensk Filmdatabas (in Swedish). Retrieved 20 August 2015.
2. "To Kill a Child". Nationalföreningen för trafiksäkerhetens främjande (NTF) (in Swedish). Retrieved 20 August 2015.

External links

• "Att döda ett barn". Student WWW server at CSC, KTH (full original text in Swedish).
• "To Kill a Child". The New York Review of Books (full translated text of the original).