After falling into an affair with the married father of a would-be suitor, Jenny has a baby out-of- wedlock and decides to raise the child on her own. Undset’ s portrayal of a woman struggling toward independence and fulfillment is written with an unflinching, clear-eyed honesty that renders her story as compelling today as it was nearly a century ago. This new translation by Tiina Nunnally captures the fresh, vivid style of Undset’s writing and restores passages omitted from the only previous edition to appear in English, which was published in 1921. Most famous for her later, historical fiction set in Catholic, medieval Scandinavia, Undset stands revealed with Jenny, her first major novel, as an unsparing, compassionate, magnificent realist, the creator of works that are at once thoroughly modern and of enduring interest.

    Upon meeting Edvarda, the daughter of a merchant in a nearby town, they are both strongly attracted to each other, but neither understands the other's love.

    At the dark center of this work are questions of why certain individuals turn against their own country, their own values, and their own "selves" so to speak. But in this weaving of fact and fiction, the faithful and the traitors are not necessarily easily distinguishable. A wonderful tale of adventure and a country's fate by the author of The Road to the World's End (Sun & Moon Press) and The Troll Circle.Sigurd Hoel was for years an editor of the great Norwegian publishing house Gyldendal. He died in 1960.

    Wilfred Sagen at fourteen is still a perfectly turned out, impeccably behaved "Little Lord Fauntleroy" to his family, but to his teachers he is a disruptive enigma and, to a pack of Oslo street urchins, an instigator of crime. In his often desperate search for emotional integration, Wilfred is hampered by an acute and introspective intelligence which only compounds his normal adolescent anxieties. Painfully aware of the split in his own personality, Wilfred longs for wholeness and harmony (personified by the young Jewish violinist, Miriam), but is torn by guilt and the realization that he cannot control either himself or the world.By the time of his death, Johan Borgen was acclaimed as one of the major figures in twentieth-century Scandinavian literature. He is best known for his Lillelord Trilogy, which deals with the moral and physical degeneration of Wilfred Sagen over three decades. For Borgen, Wilfred’s loss of innocence and fractured existence had their counterparts in the cultural shock experienced by all of Norway through two world wars, the Nazi occupation, and explosive technological change. This English-language edition of Lillelord (1955), the first volume of the Lillelord Trilogy, has been translated by Elizabeth Brown Moen (in Oslo) and Ronald E. Peterson (at Occidental College in Los Angeles). Mr. Peterson has also edited the volume and provided an informative introduction.

    This book may have occasional imperfections such as missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. that were either part of the original artifact, or were introduced by the scanning process. We believe this work is culturally important, and despite the imperfections, have elected to bring it back into print as part of our continuing commitment to the preservation of printed works worldwide. We appreciate your understanding of the imperfections in the preservation process, and hope you enjoy this valuable book.

    With this unpromising start, Mr Bjørneboe was able, by his second novel, a study of collaboration in wartime Norway, to make himself even less popular in his home country. With the publication of The Least of These, called by Sigurd Hoel, "the most important Norwegian novel since the war", the author completed the process of making himself persona non grata in the Scandinavian countries. The Least of These has been printed in six languages, and although he enjoys a considerable reputation as a poet, Mr Bjørneboe's book has been roundly condemned by educators wherever it has appeared. The fate of the little boy, Jonas, crushed by the enforced conformity of his education, is not, the author says, the central theme of the novel. "All the important persons in this novel are different variations of Jonas - all of them are Jonases. The theme of the book is not the boy Jonas, but the 'being a Jonas.'"

    He is so captivated by her that he charms and marries her and tries to turn her into a respectable woman. However, her lower-class origin and sexual experience creates an unbridgeable gulf between her and the other wives. Theodor's increasingly brutal attempts to quell her independent spirit push her into actions that lead by inevitable steps toward tragedy. The novel is set in Norway's capital city of Kristiania and Skram has an acute eye for detail and her realistic descriptions of degrading poverty call to mind the writings of her contemporary, Emile Zola.

    Ghosts is a scathing indictment of Victorian society in which Ibsen refutes the notion that if one simply fulfills one's duty rather than following one's desires then a good and noble life will be achieved. Scandalous in its day for its frank discussion of venereal disease and marriage infidelity, Ghosts remains to this day an intense psychological drama and sharp social criticism.Ghosts was written during the autumn of 1881 and was published in December of the same year. It was not performed in the theatre until May 1882, when a Danish touring company produced it in the Aurora Turner Hall in Chicago. Ibsen disliked the translator William Archer's use of the word 'Ghosts' as the play's title, whereas the Norwegian Gengangere would be more accurately translated as The Revenants, which literally means The Ones who Return.

    Their routine, isolated existence is interrupted when a lumberjack arrives at their lakeside cottage and falls in love with Hege, leaving Mattis fearful that he will lose his sister. The careful translation from the Norwegian underscores Vesaas's rare sensitivity in recording Mattis's often insightful view of his world. With a limited understanding of the unpredictable power of nature, Mattis nonetheless turns to the elements to discover the answers—with unsettling results.

    An international bestseller and longlisted for the Dublin Literary Prize, it tells the story of Edvard and starts at his family’s tree farm in Norway, where he was raised by his grandfather. The death of Edvard’s parents when he was three has always been a mystery but he knows that the fate of his grandfather’s brother, Einar, is somehow connected. One day a coffin is delivered to the farm for his grandfather, long before the grandfather’s death––a meticulous, beautiful, and unique piece of craftsmanship with the hallmarks of a certain master craftsman––raising the thought that Einar isn’t dead after all. Edvard is now driven to unravel the mystery of his parents’ death. Following a trail of clues from Norway to the Shetland Islands to the battlefields of France and sixteen ancient walnut trees colored by poison gas in World War I, Edvard ultimately discovers a very unusual inheritance. Spanning a century and masterfully navigating themes of revenge and forgiveness, love and loneliness, The Sixteen Trees of the Somme displays the rich talents of Lars Mytting––whose novels have sold over a million copies worldwide––in a story that is utterly compelling and unforgettable.

    This Nordic Prize-winning novel, a truly gripping epic, relates the lives of four generations of a unique and strange family with touching intimacy and surreal comedy.Traces four generations of a family marked by the untimely birth of Fred, a misfit and boxer conceived during a devastating rape who forges an unusual friendship with his younger half-brother, Barnum.

    Imaginative and intelligent, Alberta is a misfit trapped in a stiflingly provincial town in the far north of Norway whose only affinity is for her extrovert brother Jacob.

    He writes lists, obsesses over the nature of time, and finds joy in bouncing balls--all in an effort to find out how best to live life. An utterly enchanting meditation on experience, Naive. Super was a #1 best-seller in Erlend Loe's native Norway.

    That was what he said, standing at the door to the cabin where I was spending the summer with my father. I was fifteen. It was 1948 and one of the first days of July.Trond’s friend Jon often appeared at his doorstep with an adventure in mind for the two of them. But this morning would turn out to be different. What began as a joy ride on “borrowed” horses ends with Jon falling into a strange trance of grief. Trond soon learns what befell Jon earlier that day—an incident that marks the beginning of a series of vital losses for both boys. Set in the easternmost region of Norway, Out Stealing Horses begins with an ending. Sixty-seven-year-old Trond has settled into a rustic cabin in an isolated area to live the rest of his life with a quiet deliberation. A meeting with his only neighbor, however, forces him to reflect on that fateful summer.

    What follows is a quest to find the killer, encompassing by turns a picaresque and endlessly inventive look at the conditions that have brought Wergeland to this critical juncture in life. From his hair's breadth escape from a ravenous polar bear while filming in Greenland to a near-death experience aboard a passenger ferry in the icy Baltic, the Tom Jones-like experiences that comprise the narrative of Wergeland's life, relayed in Kjaerstad's veneered and acutely observant prose, provide a fascinating portrait of a media icon at the crux of his journey as an artist.