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Karin Boye

Biography

Karin Boye was born in Gothenburg in 1900. She started writing poetry at the age of ten and painting when a teenager. She went to college in Uppsala where she studied Greek, Scandinavian languages and literary history. Her first collection of poetry – Moln [Clouds] – was published when she was twenty-two. After obtaining her bachelor’s degree, she studied history at the University of Stockholm. She worked as an editor and then a teacher and married Leif Björk but their marriage fell apart after her affair with Gunner Bergström, wife of the poet Gunnar Ekelöf, and they divorced. She started publishing novels as well as poems. Her best-known novel is Kallocain (Kallocain) about a male-dominated totalitarian society. In 1941 she killed herself.

Other links

Karin Boye
Karin Boye Society
Lilith (painting by her)
Karin Boye (novel) Swedish)

Bibliography

1922 Moln
1924 Gömda land
1927 Härdarna
1931 Astarte
1933 Merit vaknar
1934 Uppgörelser
1934 Kris
1935 För trädets skull
1936 För lite
1940 Ur funckton
1940 Kallocain (Kallocain)
1941 Bebådelse
1941 De sju dödssynderna
1942 Dikter
1949 Varia
1949 Tendens och verkan
1979 Månsång
1981 Det stora undret
1982 Soldrottningens godson
1985″To a Friend” (selected poetry)
1992 Det hungriga ögat
1994 Resedagbok i Grekland
1994 Complete Poems
2004 Samlade dikter
2008 Snäckors sorl ett urval noveller