This is an automatically translated description

The protagonist of The Red Room is a young official, Arvid Falk, who suddenly realises that his vocation is literature, and tries to find his place among the 'red' writers. However, he quickly becomes disillusioned. Life reveals to him the fact that only mediocrity can win honours and recognition from society. Instead of ideals and true literature, there are only conversations of the literary and artistic fraternity in a restaurant hall nicknamed the Red Room."

Strindberg's critical arrows hit all spheres of life in Swedish society in the mid-nineteenth century. The novel takes place in various places in the capital - in private homes, institutions, newspaper offices, art studios, churches and theatres, etc.

With this work, the author exposed the ugly problems of Swedish life so much that official circles persecuted him for a long time from the pages of newspapers, and the book was condemned by the public. However, it was with The Red Room that a new stage in the development of Swedish literature began - a time of "harsh poetry of reality," according to Selma Lagerlöf, and Strindberg was instantly dubbed the "Swedish Zola."