Doctor Glas

A lonely Stockholm physician keeps a diary through one bright summer as he comes to contemplate murder: to free a young woman, Helga, from the repulsive husband, Pastor Gregorius, who forces himself on her. Söderberg's city is exact and atmospheric: the doctor's consulting rooms in the centre, the Old Town church where the pastor serves, the park island of Djurgården where Glas broods on his walks, and the palace waterfront under the endless northern light.

Doctor Glas

Doctor Glas's consulting rooms

The diary

The whole novel is the diary Glas writes here through a Stockholm summer, a cultivated, isolated man turning over questions of love, death and his own emptiness. When Helga Gregorius comes to him for help against her husband, the abstract musings of a lonely doctor begin to harden into a plan.

Framing diary

inferred Glas keeps his diary and sees patients from consulting rooms in central Stockholm; the specific address is invented and sited in the city centre where such practices stood.

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