Sven Lindqvist
Swedish writer (1932–2019)
Sven Oskar Lindqvist (28 March 1932 – 14 May 2019) was a prolific Swedish author whose 35 books range from essays, aphorisms, autobiography, and documentary prose to travel and reportage. He was educated at Stockholm University, and spent a year as a cultural attaché in Beijing, but spent most of his life as a writer, known for his persistence and independence. In the 1970s he established the public history movement Dig Where You Stand. From the late 1980s he focused on European imperialism, colonialism, racism, genocide, environmental degradation, and war.
Among his best-known and most widely admired works are his 1996 discussion of racism, Exterminate All the Brutes, based on a phrase in Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness, and his 2001 A History of Bombing, an intentionally fractured narrative written in 399 short chapters.
The newspaper Svenska Dagbladet described Lindqvist as one of the most important authors in modern Swedish literature. He won many of Sweden's most prestigious literary and journalistic awards.
Biography
Early life
Sven Lindqvist was born in Stockholm on 28 March 1932. He was awarded a PhD in the history of literature by Stockholm University—his thesis, in 1966, was on the Swedish poet Vilhelm Ekelund—and an honorary doctorate from Uppsala University. From 1960, he spent two years working as cultural attaché at the Swedish embassy in Beijing, China.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Sven Lindqvist” is swedish writer (1932–2019). The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Sven, Lindqvist and Swedish, not as a finished interpretation.
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The entry’s evidential value lies in the named roles, institutions and publications that can be tested against primary documentation. The source revision retrieved here is dated Mar 1, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q1360365. VIAF identifies the subject as 111494523. The Library of Congress control number is n80076553. 4 of 5 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 1 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1932, 2019, 1996 and 2001.
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This entry incorporates text from “Sven Lindqvist” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.