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"Lasse-Majas besynnerliga äventyr berättade av honom själv" - Lars Molin

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"Lasse-Majas besynnerliga äventyr berättade av honom själv" -

Lasse-Maja’s Peculiar Adventures Told by Himself

The story of a peasant boy who became Sweden’s Robin Hood—if one can ever trust a hardened criminal and notorious liar. Lasse-Maja, thief and trickster in women’s clothing, tells without embellishment of his unsuspecting fiancées, wild thieving sprees, and daring escapes from the long arm of the law—in the greatest bestseller of the nineteenth century.

Adventure follows adventure in a life lived sometimes as a woman, sometimes as a man—but never within the bounds of law or morality. From his first childhood thefts to a life sentence in the fearsome fortress of Carlsten, and all the scandalous misdeeds along the way, this is the tale of a life lived in defiance of every social rule—yet ending in the status of folk hero.

Lasse-Maja’s autobiography became Sweden’s very first bestseller upon its publication in 1833. The text has been carefully typeset for easier reading, but the words remain unchanged.

The Curious Adventures of Lasse-Maja vividly portrays a bygone Sweden from the perspective of the lower and lowest social classes. The autobiography complements Almqvist’s novel It Can Be Done as a literary-historical document, yet as a work of literature it reached far more readers in the nineteenth century thanks to its mass printings and cheap pamphlet editions.

The book’s popularity rested largely on Lasse-Maja’s narrative talent and his fascinating—and above all forbidden—way of life. At times Lasse-Maja preferred to live as a woman. Women’s clothing was not only a strategy for theft, but from his earliest years also a part of his identity. Between the lines emerges the portrait of a complex individual who managed to live true to himself in an age when crossing gender boundaries was taboo.

This autobiography is a time capsule, told in a unique and—by all accounts—unreliable voice, which is undoubtedly part of its charm.

The Curious Adventures of Lasse-Maja rightfully holds its place among Swedish classics.