Gösta Ågren

Sven Gösta Ågren (3 August 1936[1] – 24 June 2020[2]) was a Finland-Swedish author who won the Finlandia Prize in 1988 for Jär.

[3][4] Gösta Ågren, who wrote his works in Swedish, praised the Gospel of Mark for its literary values and published the collection Timmermannen ('The Carpenter') in reference to it.

[5] He was known for his left-wing sympathies, which can be seen in his autobiographical work concerning the rural "proletariat."

In his poems, Ågren often referred to the region he was born in, Ostrobothnia, on the west coast of Finland.

(Books from Finland once had t-shirts printed with a philosophical line from one of his poems: “Don’t worry, it will / never work out.” The shirts were highly popular.)

Gösta Ågren in 1968.