Marty’s Shadow: Heroism, War, and the Monster Mother, Three Perspectives on a Play by Stig Dagerman

Historians, psychiatrists, and family members explore what motivated Swedish literary hero Stig Dagerman to write the play Marty’s Shadow. Dagerman based the play on his friend Etta Federn and her sons whom he met in post-war Paris.

The play, however, is shockingly brutal: a mother glorifies her dead son Marty—a hero of the French Resistance—while tormenting her other, more cowardly, son.  What influenced him to write this story?