Harry Martinson (May 6, 1904—February 11, 1978) was a Swedish sailor, author and poet. In 1949 he was elected into the Swedish Academy. He was awarded a joint Nobel Prize in Literature in 1974 together with fellow Swede Eyvind Johnson. The choice for Eyvind Johnson and Harry Martinson was very controversial as both were on the Nobel panel. They and Graham Greene, Saul Bellow and Vladimir Nabokov were the favored candidates that year.
Martinson wa...
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Harry Martinson (May 6, 1904—February 11, 1978) was a Swedish sailor, author and poet. In 1949 he was elected into the Swedish Academy. He was awarded a joint Nobel Prize in Literature in 1974 together with fellow Swede Eyvind Johnson. The choice for Eyvind Johnson and Harry Martinson was very controversial as both were on the Nobel panel. They and Graham Greene, Saul Bellow and Vladimir Nabokov were the favored candidates that year.
Martinson was born in Jämshög, Blekinge County in south-eastern Sweden. At a young age he lost both his parents, whereafter he was stationed in the Swedish countryside as a foster child (Kommunalbarn). At the age of sixteen, Martinson ran away, and enrolled on a ship where he spent the next years sailing around the world, visiting countries such as Brazil and India.
A few years later, lung problems forced him to set ashore in Sweden. The next years were spent travelling around Sweden without a steady employment, at times living as a vagabond on country...
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