His enormous body of prose fiction, poetry, stage dramas and screenplays (including the Oscar-winning Pelle the Conqueror) won him virtually every major Nordic literary prize other than the Nobel. As he once told an interviewer, “Every time I feel depressed that I’m not doing anything, I look at this bookshelf [of my work] and say to myself, ‘Well, that is seven meters and I have done a little bit, so I can die.'” – The Washington Post