A Living Soul

Per Christian Jersild, better known as P. C. Jersild, (born 1935) is a Swedish author and physician. He also holds an honorary doctorate in medicine from Uppsala University, and another one in engineering from the Royal Institute of Technology (1999). P. C. Jersild was born in Katrineholm in a middle-class family, his first book was Räknelära which he released 1960 at the age of 25, although he had already been writing for 10 years at that time. Until now he has written 35 books, usually focused on social criticism. His most famous work is Barnens ö (Children's Island), which tells the story of a young boy, on the verge of adulthood, who runs off from a children's summer camp to spend time alone in the big city, Stockholm. Another book worth mentioning is Babels hus (The House of Babel) which gives an account of the inhuman treatment of patients at a large modern hospital, said to be modeled on the Karolinska Hospital in Huddinge, outside Stockholm. Aside from his literary production, Jersild has also been a columnist for Dagens Nyheter since the mid-1980s. In 1999, he was elected a member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences.