Lacrimosa

Carl Jonas Love Almqvist, the future writer, dreams of possessing a celestial being that is neither person nor animal. Employed to teach the children on a Finnish manor, Fagervik, among his master's cabinet of curiosities, he comes upon Ros, a feral child hiding in the thorny undergrowth near the stables, still neither girl nor boy, and resolves to mould her according to Rousseau. Ros goes with him to Stockholm's Klara district, makes friends with the actress Emilie Högqvist, falls in love and finds a place at the Royal Theatre. Written in a blend of today's Swedish and that of the early 1800s, the novel mixes history and invention around Almqvist's character Tintomara, with weeping, poison and an unexplained mystery of the period.

AI-generated summary

About the book

Form

Novel

Length

299 pages in the original

Genres

Historical (assigned by AI)

Set in

Finland, Sweden, early 1800s

First published

2011 by Natur & Kultur

Author's age

54 when first published

ISBN

9789127127296 (original)