Carl-Göran Ekerwald (30 December 1923 – 8 April 2025) was a Swedish novelist, literary critic, translator, forest worker and teacher.

Life and career

Ekerwald was born in

Östersund Östersund (; ) is an Urban areas in Sweden, urban area (Stad (Sweden), city) in Jämtland in northern Sweden. It is the seat of Östersund Municipality and the capital of Jämtland County. Östersund is located at the shores of Sweden's fifth-larg ...

. After studies at

Uppsala University Uppsala University (UU) () is a public university, public research university in Uppsala, Sweden. Founded in 1477, it is the List of universities in Sweden, oldest university in Sweden and the Nordic countries still in operation. Initially fou ...

, he worked as a teacher and a

principal Principal may refer to: Title or rank * Principal (academia), the chief executive of a university ** Principal (education), the head of a school * Principal (civil service) or principal officer, the senior management level in the UK Civil Ser ...

. He made his literary debut with ''Elden och fågelungen'', a collection of short stories, in 1959; several of his literary works have been said to deal with the relation between eccentrics, or outsiders, and society. From the 1990s, he wrote several intellectual biographies on

Horace Quintus Horatius Flaccus (; 8 December 65 BC – 27 November 8 BC), Suetonius, Life of Horace commonly known in the English-speaking world as Horace (), was the leading Roman lyric poet during the time of Augustus (also known as Octavian). Th ...

Voltaire François-Marie Arouet (; 21 November 169430 May 1778), known by his ''Pen name, nom de plume'' Voltaire (, ; ), was a French Age of Enlightenment, Enlightenment writer, philosopher (''philosophe''), satirist, and historian. Famous for his wit ...

Shakespeare William Shakespeare ( 23 April 1564 – 23 April 1616) was an English playwright, poet and actor. He is widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's pre-eminent dramatist. He is often called England's natio ...

Céline Céline, sometimes spelled Celine, is a French female first name version of Latin origin, coming from ''Caelīna'', the feminine form of the Roman cognomen ''Caelīnus'', meaning "heavenly".Nietzsche Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche (15 October 1844 – 25 August 1900) was a German philosopher. He began his career as a classical philologist, turning to philosophy early in his academic career. In 1869, aged 24, Nietzsche became the youngest pro ...

. Ekerwald was also known to have introduced and popularized

Persian culture The culture of Iran () or culture of PersiaYarshater, Ehsa, ''Iranian Studies'', vol. XXII no. 1 (1989) is one of the oldest and among the most influential in the world. Iran (Persia) is widely regarded as one of the cradles of civilization.

and literature in Sweden; he edited the volumes ''Persiska antologin'' (1976) and ''Persisk balsam'' (2007), two anthologies of translations of

Sufi Sufism ( or ) is a mysticism, mystic body of religious practice found within Islam which is characterized by a focus on Islamic Tazkiyah, purification, spirituality, ritualism, and Asceticism#Islam, asceticism. Practitioners of Sufism are r ...

poets and mystics such as

Attar of Nishapur Faridoddin Abu Hamed Mohammad Attar Nishapuri ( – c. 1221; ), better known by his pen-names Faridoddin () and ʿAttar of Nishapur (, Attar means apothecary), was a poet, theoretician of Sufism, and hagiographer from Nishapur who had an immense ...

Omar Khayyam Ghiyāth al-Dīn Abū al-Fatḥ ʿUmar ibn Ibrāhīm Nīshābūrī (18 May 1048 – 4 December 1131) (Persian language, Persian: غیاث الدین ابوالفتح عمر بن ابراهیم خیام نیشابورﻯ), commonly known as Omar ...

, and

Rumi Jalāl al-Dīn Muḥammad Rūmī (), or simply Rumi (30 September 1207 – 17 December 1273), was a 13th-century poet, Hanafi '' faqih'' (jurist), Maturidi theologian (''mutakallim''), and Sufi mystic born during the Khwarazmian Empire ...

, made by Eric Hermelin. Ekerwald also translated works by

Ulrike Meinhof Ulrike Marie Meinhof (7 October 1934 – 9 May 1976) was a German left-wing militant, journalist and founding member of the Red Army Faction (RAF) in West Germany, commonly referred to in the press as the "Baader-Meinhof gang". She is the repute ...

and

Antonio Gramsci Antonio Francesco Gramsci ( , ; ; 22 January 1891 – 27 April 1937) was an Italian Marxist philosophy, Marxist philosopher, Linguistics, linguist, journalist, writer, and politician. He wrote on philosophy, Political philosophy, political the ...

into Swedish. In later years, he also wrote memoirs, including ''Skogvaktarens pojke'' (2002), which deals with his upbringing in

Jämtland Jämtland () is a historical provinces of Sweden, province () in the centre of Sweden in northern Europe. It borders Härjedalen and Medelpad to the south, Ångermanland to the east, Lapland, Sweden, Lapland to the north and Trøndelag and Norw ...

. Ekerwald was awarded a

honorary doctorate An honorary degree is an academic degree for which a university (or other degree-awarding institution) has waived all of the usual requirements. It is also known by the Latin phrases ''honoris causa'' ("for the sake of the honour") or '' ad hon ...

Umeå University Umeå University (; Ume Sami language, Ume Sami: ) is a public university, public research university located in Umeå, in the mid-northern region of Sweden. The university was founded in 1965 and is the fifth oldest within Sweden's present bord ...

in 1986, and the

Dobloug Prize The Dobloug Prize (, ) is a literature prize awarded for Swedish and Norwegian fiction. The prize is named after Norwegian businessman and philanthropist Birger Dobloug (1881–1944) pursuant to his bequest. The prize sum is 4 * 150,000 Swedish crow ...

in 1987. He was married twice; first to Anna Ekerwald from 1945 until her death in 2009, and second to

Sigrid Kahle Sigrid Ida Matilda Kahle (née Nyberg; 18 September 1928 – 31 December 2013) was a Swedish journalist and writer. She was born in Paris in 1928, to the orientalist H.S. Nyberg and his wife Fanny, née Hasselberg. She grew up in Uppsala where ...

from 2010 until her death in 2013. Ekerwald

turned 100 A centenarian is a person who has reached the age of 100. Because life expectancies at birth worldwide are well below 100, the term is invariably associated with longevity. The United Nations estimated that there were 316,600 living centenarian ...

on 30 December 2023, upon which he reflected in his last published book, ''Fördelen med att bli gammal'', from the same year. He died on 8 April 2025, at th age of 101.

References

1923 births 2025 deaths People from Östersund Swedish male novelists Swedish male writers 20th-century Swedish male writers 20th-century Swedish novelists 20th-century Swedish translators 21st-century Swedish male writers 21st-century Swedish novelists Dobloug Prize winners Litteris et Artibus recipients Swedish men centenarians Writers from Jämtland County {{Sweden-writer-stub