Sven Delblanc

Who was Sven Delblanc?

Sven Delblanc, born May 26, 1931 in Swan River, Manitoba, Canada, died December 15, 1992 in Sunnersta, Gottsunda Parish, Uppsala, Sweden was a Swedish author and professor of literature. He is buried in Hammarby kyrkogård in Uppsala, Sweden.

Delblanc was an associate professor in the history of literature at Uppsala university beginning in 1965. He received the Aftonbladet Literature Prize in 1965. Before his death he was pointed out as the anonymous writer Bo Balderson.

In Sweden Delblanc is considered one of the foremost Swedish authors of the later half of the twentieth Century, yet in English-speaking countries he is almost unknown.

He was born in Canada but grew up in Trosa, Sweden. His parents divorced and the father, Siegfried Axel Herman Delblanc, remarried. His paternal grandfather, Friedrich Hermann Delblanc, a bookmaker in Stockholm, was from Leipzig, Saxony, Germany. Sven Delblanc's maternal relatives were from Väse in Värmland in the West of Sweden. His maternal grandmother came from Norway. During the fourteenth century the Delblanc family lived in southern France in the vicinity of le Puy, but during the Napoleonic Era a forefather deserted and went to Germany. The maternal grandfather, Axel Nordfält, was the inspiration to the character Samuel in Samuels bok.