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Norwegian
Modern Classics
Series
Norvik Press is pleased to announce a new series
of nineteenth and twentieth-century classics of
Norwegian literature. Several of Norway’s most
important nineteenth-century novelists – Camilla
Collett, Arne Garborg, Jonas Lie, Alexander Kielland
– have been scarcely available in translation, yet are
central to an understanding of the process of nationbuilding and the forging of Norway’s independent
literary heritage. Twentieth-century authors like
Sigurd Hoel, Johan Borgen, Jens Bjørneboe and
Torborg Nedreaas, who have produced absorbing
studies of extraordinary characters and stirring
commentaries on contemporary issues, have been
undeservedly marginalized because they were not
writing in a widely-read language. Many of these will
now appear in English translation for the first time.
The first three books in our Norwegian Modern
Classics series, Arne Garborg: The Making of Daniel
Braut, Sigurd Hoel: A Fortnight Before the Frost, and
Jonas Lie: The Family at Gilje, are now available. In
2013 we shall be publishing Amalie Skram’s Fru Inés
(1891), translated by Katherine Hanson and Judith
Messick, and in 2014 Johan Borgen’s Lillelord (1955),
translated by Janet Garton.
Available from all good booksellers including
Amazon, Blackwell, The Book Depository, Dufour.
For further information about this series or other Norvik
Press publications please contact:
Norvik Press
Department of Scandinavian Studies
University College London
Gower Street
London WC1E 6BT
United Kingdom
Website: www.norvikpress.com
E-mail address: norvik.press@ucl.ac.uk
Tel: 0044 (0)20 76797748
Norvik Press gratefully acknowledges the generous
support of NORLA (Norwegian Literature Abroad,
Fiction and Non-Fiction) and The Freedom of Expression
Foundation towards the publication of this series.
Norwegian
Modern Classics
Front illustrations (from left to right):
Arne Garborg (engraving by H. C. Olsen, 1885); sketch
based on Portrett av Sigurd Hoel (photograph by Sturlason
Eier, 1950); Jonas Lie (engraving by H. P. Hansen, 1874)
Brochure design: Dr Elettra Carbone
Printed in the UK by Page Bros.
Norvik Press Series
Arne Garborg
THE MAKING OF DANIEL BRAUT
Sigurd Hoel
A FORTNIGHT BEFORE THE FROST
ISBN 9781870041836
UK £9.95
ISBN 9781870041881
UK £9.95
Translated by Marie Wells
Daniel Braut, the protagonist of Arne
Garborg’s ground-breaking 1883 novel, is
an impressionable boy whose one ambition
is to rise above the poverty of his farming
background in western Norway. Regarded
by others as gifted, he sees education as the
path to becoming part of the establishment.
However, his long struggle is not only hampered
by his desperate poverty, his unrealistic dreams
and his provincialism, but takes a terrible toll
on his personality. He is a mirror of his age, of a
Norway slowly emerging from a predominantly
peasant society into a modern urban culture,
and of the religious, political and social
upheavals of the late nineteenth century.
Translated by Sverre Lyngstad
Dr. Knut Holmen, a successful middle-aged ear,
nose and throat specialist in Oslo, decides at the
beginning of this novel to take two weeks out
of his life to take stock of himself and his values.
His superficial self-satisfaction slowly crumbles
as echoes from the past grow stronger and
threaten to demolish the edifice of bourgeois
respectability he has painstakingly constructed,
and he is left doubting whether anything is as
it seems. An unloved child becomes a man who
cannot love, and perhaps all he can do is try
to give his children the unconditional love he
never knew.
Jonas Lie
THE FAMILY AT GILJE
Translated by Marie WellsWiWith
With original illustrations by Erik Werenskiold
ISBN 9781870041942
UK £14.95
Captain Jæger is the well-meaning but
temperamental head of a rural family living in
straitened circumstances in 1840s Norway. The
novel focuses on the fates of the women of the
family: the heroic Ma, who struggles
unremittingly to keep up appearances and
make ends meet, and their eldest daughter
Thinka, forced to renounce the love of her life
and marry an older and wealthier suitor. Then
there is the younger daughter, the talented and
beautiful Inger-Johanna, destined to make a
splendid match – but will the captain with the
brilliant diplomatic career ahead of him make
her happy? With great empathy and affection
for each member of the family Lie evokes the
tragedy of hopes dashed by harsh social and
economic realities.