Strindberg (1849-1912) is best known outside Sweden as a dramatist, but he was also a prolific writer of novels, short stories, essays, journalism and poetry-as well as a notable artist and photographer. Although he spent many years abroad, Strindberg was born, grew up and died in Stockholm. A satire of the rapidly changing society of the 1870s, The Red Room was Strindberg's first novel and marked his literary breakthrough. It contains some of the great set-piece scenes in Swedish literature, a gallery of unforgettable caricatures in the spirit of Dickens, humor, pathos, and satirical targets as apt now as they were then. The Red Room is often called Sweden's first modern novel, and it remains modern almost a century and a half later.