Lagerkvist wrote poems,
plays, novels, stories, and essays of considerable expressive power and influence from his early 20s to his late 70s.
Lagerkvist's 1944 novel Dvärgen(The Dwarf), a searching,
ironic tale about evil, was the first to bring him positive international attention outside of the Nordic countries.
Ten years after Ångest, Lagerkvist married for the second time,
a union which was to provide a pillar of safety in his life until the death of his wife forty years later.