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On 30 January 1976 two policemen walked into a rehearsal at the Royal Dramatic Theatre in Stockholm and took Ingmar Bergman away for questioning about his taxes. The charges were dropped within two months, but he left Sweden for Munich and did not settle back until 1984. He tells the story himself in The Magic Lantern (1987), the autobiography he wrote after giving up feature films. Bergman, born in Uppsala in 1918, directed more than 60 films and over 170 stage productions, and wrote most of his scripts himself; from the 1960s his screenplays were published in English as books. In his last decades he turned to prose, with two memoirs and three novels about his parents’ marriage. This guide covers his ten key books, in order, and where to begin.
By Lisanne Swart · 10 key books · 1960–1997 · Updated October 2026
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Quick answer
Ingmar Bergman’s best-known books are his autobiography The Magic Lantern (English 1988), Images: My Life in Film (1994) and the novel The Best Intentions (1993), alongside published screenplays such as Scenes from a Marriage (1974) and Fanny and Alexander (1983). Start with The Magic Lantern; the three novels about his parents follow on from it.
Where to Start with Ingmar Bergman
If you want his life in his own words
→ The Magic Lantern (1988) — the 1987 autobiography, translated in 1988.
If you want the films behind the man
→ Images (1994) — Bergman going through his films one by one.
If you want his fiction
→ The Best Intentions (1993) — the novel of his parents’ courtship and marriage.
If you want to read a screenplay first
→ Scenes from a Marriage (1974) — the six-part marriage drama as a script.
10 Ingmar Bergman Books, in Order
Four Screenplays of Ingmar Bergman
The first collection of his scripts in English, translated by Lars Malmström and David Kushner and published by Simon and Schuster in New York. It contains Smiles of a Summer Night, The Seventh Seal, Wild Strawberries and The Magician, with an opening essay in which Bergman discusses film-making.
A Film Trilogy
The scripts of Through a Glass Darkly (1961), Winter Light (1963) and The Silence (1963), three chamber films about faith, doubt and isolation. Through a Glass Darkly won the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film.
Persona and Shame
Two screenplays from the second half of the 1960s: Persona (1966), in which a nurse cares for an actress who has stopped speaking and the two women’s identities begin to merge, and Shame (1968), about a couple of musicians caught up in a civil war on an island.
Scenes from a Marriage
The six-episode script of his 1973 television series about Johan and Marianne, a professional couple whose apparently happy marriage comes apart and then, in a different form, continues. The English text, translated by Alan Blair, was published by Pantheon in New York in 1974.
Fanny and Alexander
The script of the 1982 film about the Ekdahl family in Uppsala in the early 1900s, seen through the eyes of the boy Alexander, whose widowed mother marries a severe bishop. The film won four Academy Awards, including Best Foreign Language Film. Pantheon published the English text.
The Magic Lantern
Published in Swedish as Laterna magica by Norstedts in 1987 and in English, translated by Joan Tate, by Viking in 1988. It is not chronological: chapters move between his childhood in a pastor’s family, his theatre work, the 1976 tax affair, his marriages, his teenage summers in Nazi Germany, and meetings with Laurence Olivier, Greta Garbo and Herbert von Karajan. It says surprisingly little about making films. Woody Allen reviewed it for The New York Times Book Review.
The Best Intentions
His first novel, published in Swedish as Den goda viljan in 1991 and by Arcade in English in 1993. Written as a screenplay with expanded directions, it follows his parents, Henrik Bergman, a poor theology student, and Anna Åkerblom, from a wealthier family, from 1909 to shortly before his birth in 1918. Bille August filmed it from Bergman’s script; the film won the Palme d’Or at Cannes in 1992, and Pernilla August won Best Actress.
Images
Published in Swedish as Bilder in 1990 and by Arcade in English in 1994, translated by Marianne Ruuth. It grew out of about sixty hours of conversations with his publisher, Lasse Bergström, and covers more than 30 of his films, from Torment (1944) to Fanny and Alexander, linking Wild Strawberries to his parents and Through a Glass Darkly to a troubled marriage. Bergman meant it to replace the interview book Bergman on Bergman as a truer account.
Sunday’s Children
Published in Swedish as Söndagsbarn in 1993 and by Arcade in 1994, translated by Joan Tate. Set in July 1926 at a summer house in Dalarna, it follows the young boy Pu and his father, a pastor, over a few summer days. His son Daniel Bergman filmed it in 1992 from Ingmar’s screenplay as his feature debut.
Private Confessions
The third book about his parents, published in Swedish in 1996 and by Arcade in English in 1997. It is built from five conversations and moves between 1907 and 1934: Anna, trapped in her marriage to the pastor Henrik, has an affair with the theology student Tomas and confesses it, first to her old confessor Jacob. Liv Ullmann directed the 1996 film from Bergman’s script, with Pernilla August as Anna and Max von Sydow as Jacob.
In What Order to Read Ingmar Bergman
The years on this page are the first English editions, which often came a year or two after the Swedish originals. The screenplays stand alone and can be read in any order, ideally alongside the films. The prose books from 1987 on are best read in publication order: The Magic Lantern first, then Images, which takes up the films that the autobiography largely leaves out.
The three novels form a loose trilogy about his parents. In story order they run The Best Intentions (1909–1918), Sunday’s Children (1926) and Private Confessions (1907–1934), but each can be read on its own.
A reading path
1. The Magic Lantern (1988)
2. Images: My Life in Film (1994)
3. The Best Intentions (1993)
4. Sunday’s Children (1994)
5. Private Confessions (1997)
Everything Else Ingmar Bergman Published in English
Beyond the 10 key books: 6 more, grouped by kind.
Open a group with the + to see every book in it.
Further screenplay volumes
6
6 books · 1976–2001
- 1976Face to Facethe 1976 film about a psychiatrist’s breakdown
- 1977The Serpent’s Egghis 1977 film set in Berlin in 1923
- 1978Autumn Sonataa concert pianist and her daughter, filmed with Ingrid Bergman
- 1980From the Life of the Marionettesmade during his years in Munich
- 1983The Marriage ScenariosScenes from a Marriage, Face to Face and Autumn Sonata in one volume
- 2001The Fifth Actlate plays and screenplays; Swedish Femte akten, 1994
The years · 1918–2007
Quick facts about Ingmar Bergman
- Known for
- Ingmar Bergman is known as one of the great film directors of the twentieth century, whose spare, intense films about faith, death and marriage he mostly wrote himself.
- 1918
- Born in Uppsala, Sweden
- 1957
- The Seventh Seal and Wild Strawberries
- 1976
- Arrested over taxes; leaves for Munich
- 2007
- Dies on Fårö, aged 89
- Born
- 14 July 1918, Uppsala, Sweden
- Died
- 30 July 2007, at his home on Fårö, Sweden
- Work
- More than 60 films and documentaries and over 170 stage productions
- Theatre
- Head of the Royal Dramatic Theatre, Stockholm, 1963–1966
- Oscars
- Three Best Foreign Language Film awards: The Virgin Spring, Through a Glass Darkly, Fanny and Alexander
- Honours
- Irving G. Thalberg Memorial Award (1971); Praemium Imperiale (1991)
- Family
- Married five times; nine children
The red mark is 1988: the English edition of The Magic Lantern, his autobiography.
How Ingmar Bergman Writes: Scripts That Read Like Prose
Bergman wrote his screenplays as readable texts rather than technical documents, which is why they could be published as books. The Best Intentions shows the habit carried over into fiction: it is laid out like a script, with dialogue and long stage directions in which the narrator comments, guesses and admits what he does not know about his parents.
His prose returns again and again to the same material: a strict Lutheran parsonage, a father who punished and a mother who withheld, and the question of whether anyone is listening when people pray. The Magic Lantern moves by association rather than by date, and the Bergman Foundation itself calls it revealing and honest but not necessarily truthful — better as literature than as a record.
In Images he took a different approach, going through his films one by one in conversation with his publisher and judging them, often harshly. Read together, the two memoirs give the life and the work separately, as he intended.
Frequently asked questions about Ingmar Bergman’s books
How many books has Ingmar Bergman written?
This page lists 16 of his books in English: the 10 key books, from Four Screenplays of Ingmar Bergman (1960) to Private Confessions (1997), and 6 further screenplay volumes. His prose books are two memoirs, The Magic Lantern and Images, and three novels; most of the rest are published screenplays.
What are Ingmar Bergman’s books in order?
Four Screenplays of Ingmar Bergman (1960), A Film Trilogy (1967), Persona and Shame (1972), Scenes from a Marriage (1974), Fanny and Alexander (1983), The Magic Lantern (1988), The Best Intentions (1993), Images: My Life in Film (1994), Sunday’s Children (1994) and Private Confessions (1997). These are the English editions; the Swedish originals often appeared a year or two earlier.
Where should I start with Ingmar Bergman’s books?
The Magic Lantern, his 1987 autobiography, translated by Joan Tate in 1988. Follow it with Images: My Life in Film if you want his view of his films, or The Best Intentions if you want his fiction.
What is Ingmar Bergman’s most famous book?
The Magic Lantern, his autobiography, published in Swedish as Laterna magica in 1987 and in English in 1988. Of his published screenplays, The Seventh Seal and Wild Strawberries, both in Four Screenplays of Ingmar Bergman, are the best known.
Which of Bergman’s books were made into films?
His three novels about his parents were all filmed by other directors from his own scripts: The Best Intentions by Bille August (1992, Palme d’Or), Sunday’s Children by his son Daniel Bergman (1992) and Private Confessions by Liv Ullmann (1996). The screenplay books are the scripts of his own films.
Are The Best Intentions, Sunday’s Children and Private Confessions a trilogy?
Loosely. All three are about Bergman’s parents, Henrik and Anna, and are usually treated as a trilogy, but they do not run in sequence: Private Confessions goes back to 1907 and forward to 1934. Each can be read alone.
Is The Magic Lantern accurate?
Not entirely. The Ingmar Bergman Foundation describes it as revealing and honest but notes that “honest” does not necessarily mean “truthful”: it is dubious as a document and masterful as literature. Read Images alongside it for his account of the films.
Did Ingmar Bergman support the Nazis?
As a teenager, yes, by his own account. In 1934, aged 16, he attended a Nazi rally in Weimar and saw Hitler, and he later wrote that for many years he was on Hitler’s side; he described the revelations about the concentration camps as a shock. He writes about these summers in Germany in The Magic Lantern.
Why did Ingmar Bergman leave Sweden?
On 30 January 1976 he was arrested during rehearsals in Stockholm and charged with income-tax evasion. The charges were dropped on 23 March 1976, but he went into self-imposed exile in Munich and stayed there until 1984. He tells the story in The Magic Lantern.
Is Ingmar Bergman still alive?
No. He died on 30 July 2007 at his home on the island of Fårö, aged 89, and is buried at Fårö Church.
Footnotes
- Ingmar Bergman — Wikipedia
- The Magic Lantern — Ingmar Bergman Foundation
- The Best Intentions — Ingmar Bergman Foundation
- The Best Intentions (film) — Wikipedia
- Private Confessions — Wikipedia
- Wordless secrets: the cinema of Ingmar Bergman — The New Criterion, 1994
Bibliography last verified 9 October 2026. Where sources give different first-publication years, this page uses the year in library catalogues or the publisher’s own record.
This list was not put together by a machine.
The notes are all mine,
and the books are all his.
Lisanne x
Written by Lisanne Swart, who has curated reading lists and author guides at lisanneswart.com since 2021.
See more on her personal bookshelf.
“Film as dream, film as music. No form of art goes beyond ordinary consciousness as film does, straight to our emotions, deep into the twilight room of the soul.”
— Ingmar Bergman, The Magic Lantern (1988)
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