Our need for comfort is impossible to satisfy

Written two years before his death, Our Need for Comfort Is Impossible to Satisfy is a kind of testament by the author, in which he argues that the value of a human being cannot be measured by their performance, and that no one has the right to demand so much of them that it robs them of their desire to live.

Stig Dagerman was born on 5 October 1923 in Älvkarleby, Sweden, to working-class parents. He lived with his grandparents until the age of nine, when his father took him to Stockholm; he did not meet his mother until ten years later.

As a teenager, he became involved with Swedish anarcho-syndicalist circles and contributed to their press. After graduating from secondary school, he studied Art and Literary History at Stockholm University.
Between 1944 and 1949, he wrote four novels, plays, novellas, and numerous articles, chronicles, and reports.

He married Annemarie Götze, a German refugee and daughter of volunteers who fought in the Spanish Civil War, but separated from her eight years later when he began a relationship with Swedish actress Anita Björk.

Among his early works, The Serpent (1945) stands out for reflecting his anxiety about the Second World War. The following year, as a correspondent for Expressen, he travelled through war-torn Germany and, as a result of this experience, published German Autumn. In 1948, The Burned Child was published.

After several attempts to end his life, he committed suicide on 4 November 1954 in his garage.