Hjalmar Söderberg was a Swedish author, working from the end of the nineteenth century up until the 1930s. While most famous now for his novel Doctor Glas —a favorite of Margaret Atwood’s—he also wrote other books, plays, and several collections of short stories.

His stories have several common themes: human desire and self-deception, the inability for people to ever truly understand each other, and bittersweet reminiscences of the past. A Stockholm resident for most of his life, his work draws heavy inspiration from the locale and its social structures.

This collection of short fiction was primarily translated by Charles Wharton Stork, who was a major promoter of Swedish literature in the interwar period.