Lars Ahlin was an award winning Swedish author and aesthetician.

Ahlin left school when he was 13 to support his family, although he later attended several folk high schools. When he was 18, he had a mystical experience. He eventually moved to Stockholm

Stockholm

Stockholm is the capital and the largest city of Sweden and constitutes the most populated urban area in Scandinavia. Stockholm is the most populous city in Sweden, with a population of 851,155 in the municipality , 1.37 million in the urban area , and around 2.1 million in the metropolitan area...

, where he wrote two unpublished novels before his first success, Tåbb med manifestet (Tåbb with the Manifesto, 1943). The story, about a young proletarian who rejects the values of communism in favor of a secularized Lutheran theology where man is judged by his deeds, without preconceived notions, set the stage for his subsequent works. Critics have compared Ahlin to Fyodor Dostoyevsky and Thomas Mann

Thomas Mann

Thomas Mann was a German novelist, short story writer, social critic, philanthropist, essayist, and 1929 Nobel Prize laureate, known for his series of highly symbolic and ironic epic novels and novellas, noted for their insight into the psychology of the artist and the intellectual...

. Among the awards he received are the Prize of the Nine in 1960, the Great Novel Prize in 1962, and the Small Nobel Prize in 1966.

Notable works

• Tåbb med manifestet, 1943
• No Eyes Await Me (story collection), 1944
• Min död är min (My Death Is My Own), 1945
• Om (If, About, Around), 1946
• Kanelbiten (The Cinnamon Girl), 1953
• The Great Amnesia, 1954
• Natt i marknadstältet (Night in the Market Tent), 1957
• Bark and Leaves, 1961
• Sjätte munnen (The Sixth Mouth), 1985