The Story Archive

The Red Room

August Strindberg · 1879 CE · Novel · Nordic · Victorian

A young civil servant walks out of his sinecure to become a writer and falls in with the painters, actors and journalists who gather in the red room of a Stockholm restaurant. Chapter by chapter he is walked through the newspapers, the charities, the theatre, the church and the stock exchange, and finds each of them a racket run on other people's credulity. Published when its author was thirty, it is generally taken as the first modern Swedish novel.

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Attributes

Genre
SatireComing-of-Age
Theme
Individual vs SocietyAppearance vs RealityClass & InequalityComing of AgeAmbition & Hubris
Archetype (Jung / Campbell)
Rebel / OutlawEveryman
Plot structure
EpisodicPicaresqueBildungsroman
Symbol / motif
The City
Conflict
vs Society
Mode / tone
SatiricalRealistIronic
Culture / tradition
Nordic

Closest analogues