Name Gosta Agren Role Author | Awards Finlandia Award | |
 | ||
Books I det stora hela, Jar, A Valley in the Midst of Violence: Selected Poems, Stadren, Hid Nominations Nordic Council\'s Literature Prize Similar People Lars Hulden, Bo Carpelan, Tua Forsstrom, Claes Andersson, David McDuff | ||
Gösta Ågren (born 1936 in Nykarleby) is a Swedish-language Finnish author who won the Finlandia Prize in 1988 for Jär. Gösta Ågren has praised the Gospel of Mark for its literary values and published the collection The Carpenter in reference to it. That stated he is known for his left-wing sympathies, which can be seen in his autobiographical work concerning the rural "proletariat." His brothers Leo and Erik were also writers.
He has published poems, essays and biographies. Among the literary awarded to him is the Finlandia Prize for Fiction for the poetry collection Jär (‘Here’) in 1989. In his poems, Ågren often refers 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.)