Martin Birck's Youth by Hjalmar Soderberg

Martin entered the high school.

Here everything was strange and cold. Gray walls, long corridors. The school yard was like the desert of Sahara. When the bell rang for the first recess, Martin slipped off by himself so as to escape his new comrades. But the next recess they gathered around him in a ring, surveying him for a while in silence, till finally a little red-haired boy with a broad pate opened his mouth to ask, "What sort of devil are you?"