When the Swede Lars Gustafsson first came to Germany in 1972 as a guest of the DAAD Artists-in-Berlin programme, Berlin and the whole country were still strongly influenced by the division into two separate countries. At the same time, West German society was torn in many ways, which were to climax in the terror attacks of the so-called Rote Armee Fraktion (RAF). Aged 36 at the time, the author spent several years in Berlin and used his impressions in the cycle of novels Risse in der Mauer (Cracks in the Wall). Gustafsson captures the atmosphere in the intellectual circles of the 1970s: in a melancholy love story with a Marxist lecturer of philosophy and the prevailing feeling of neither being able nor wanting to take part in the revolutionary actions.

As in the cycle, the search for identity, for the moral conscience, the relationship between personal experience and self-reflection mark the starting points of the lyric poetry and tales that Gustafsson has published since the end of the 1950s. Born in 1936, the scholar read literature, philosophy and sociology at Uppsala and Oxford, and was seen as an intellectual poet, intermingling philosophical reflection and contemporary criticism in his own unique style. “However, there was never a time in my life in which I was able to live solely from my writing. As a professor in the United States, for example, I earned very well. I was astonished that two hours of conversation in the doctoral students’ seminar was better paid than a collection of poems,” remarks Gustafsson.

His travels took him to Germany time and time again. The stages include a spell as a visiting lecturer at the Universities of Bielefeld, Tübingen and Hamburg and also as a Fellow at the Institute for Advanced Study in Berlin in 2004. The numerous stays are also reflected in his oeuvre. Indeed, Gustafsson enables German philosophy to flow into his texts with such virtuosity that reading them becomes an intellectual and sensual pleasure. With the many works he has published in German, the author and philosopher has additionally shaped the Germans’ image of Sweden since the 1970s – beyond the grand tradition of children’s books and the popular Swedish detective stories. In 2009, the Goethe-Institute awarded him the Goethe Medal for his extensive literary oeuvre and its close points of reference with Germany. In July 2015, he received the Thomas Mann Prize.