August Strindberg

August Strindberg was a prolific writer who often drew directly from his personal experience. He wrote more than sixty plays and thirty works of fiction, autobiography, history, cultural analysis, and politics during his career, which spanned four decades. A bold experimenter and iconoclast throughout, he explored a wide range of dramatic methods and purposes, from naturalistic tragedy, monodrama, and history plays to his anticipations of expressionist and surrealist dramatic techniques. From his earliest work, Strindberg developed innovative forms of dramatic action, language, and visual composition. He is considered the father of modern Swedish literature and The Red Room has frequently been described as the first modern Swedish novel.