THE DWARF. By Pär Lagerkvist, Translated from the Swedish by Alexandra Dick, Hill and Wang, New York, 1945.
 
Fiction Novel
 
The Dwarf is a 1944 novel by Pär Lagerkvist. It is considered his most important and artistically innovative novel. It was translated into English by Alexandra Dick in 1945. The main character is a dwarf, 66 centimetres (26 in) tall, at the court of an Italian City-state in the Renaissance. The dwarf is the narrator, obviously obsessed with writing down his experiences in a form of diary. Everything in the novel is described from his viewpoint, mostly in retrospect, ranging from a few hours or minutes to several weeks or months after the actual events. When the dwarf is ordered to assassinate a number of enemies of the prince using poisoned wine, he takes this opportunity to assassinate one of the prince's rivals, simply because the dwarf dislikes the rival and the rival is having an affair with the prince's wife.
 
The novel ends with the dwarf being strapped in chains at the bottom of the royal castle, never to be released again. He is seemingly convicted for flogging the prince's wife to death in anger over her sins. However he takes this sentence lightly, since, as he says, "soon the prince will need his dwarf again".

Solid binding with clean pages & light cover edge wear. About 7 x 4 with 228 pp.