biography
pronunciation:
[shahper]
| sex:
| male
|
| lived:
| (1908–84)
|
| biography:
| Writer, born in Ostrowo, Poland. He left school at 16 and pursued various occupations, including sailor and actor, before working in Estonia (1930–40) as a freelance writer. He fled to Finland (1940) then to Sweden (1944), and finally moved to Switzerland (1947), where he converted to Catholicism (1951). His well-received novels, which are influenced by Dostoyevsky, are set in N Europe and the Baltic, and focus on the conflicts concerning conscience founded in religious belief and its survival when confronted by terror and oppression, as in Die sterbende Kirche (1935), Der Henker (1940), and Macht und Freiheit (1961). He also wrote plays, short stories, and radio and television plays. |
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