In the summer of 1946, while secluded in August Strindberg's small cabin in the Stockholm archipelago, Stig Dagerman wrote Island of the Doomed . This novel was unlike any other yet seen in Sweden and would establish him as the country's brightest literary star. To this day it is a singular work of fiction-a haunting tale that oscillates around seven castaways as they await their inevitable death on a desert island populated by blind gulls and hordes of iguanas. At the center of the island is a poisonous lagoon, where a strange fish swims in circles and devours anything in its path. As we are.