Born Ivar Johansson in Ösmo in a family of bound agricultural labourers. He began using the name Ivar Lo-Johansson in his twenties, claiming "Lo" was a family name. Unsucessfully trying to register the name, he was eventually registered by Swedish authorities as Karl Ivar Loe. In the 1920s Ivar Lo-Johansson travelled in Europe. His early books were travel books depicting the working-class in France and England. Ivar Lo-Johansson wrote over 50 proletarian novels and short-stories, all of which carried vivid portrayals of working-class people. He described the situation of the Swedish land-workers, statare, in his novels, short stories and journalism, which encouraged the adoption of certain land reforms in Sweden. He also caused much controversy with his features on old-age pensioners, gypsies and other non-privileged people. He died, aged 89, in Stockholm. Lo-Johansson first came to the literary fore in the mid-1930s with the publication of his novel Godnatt, jord and two short story collections. His stories were infused with realistic and detailed depictions of the plight of landless Swedish peasants, known as statare. The first of his short stories collection to be published was Statarna I–II, followed by his Jordproletärerna. He also explored the conflict between individualism and collectivism extensively in his autobiographical series of eight novels. He published the series in the 1950s with The Illiterate. He published the last book in the series, The Proletarian Writer in 1960. In the 1970s he wrote numerous short stories dealing with the seven deadly sins. In the 1980s he wrote several memoirs.
Legacy
Ivar Los park on Mariaberget, Stockholm is named after him. There is a 1991 bronze bust of Lo-Johansson by Nils Möllerberg in the park on Bastugatan. The Ivar Lo Society preserves his apartment in Stockholm as a museum. The Stockholm city library describes Lo-Johansson as "one of our greatest proletarian writers" and an "innovator of Swedish realistic prose, engaged with social issues like care of the elderly and the question of tied labour."
