{"title":"Books by Henrik Pontoppidan","description":null,"products":[{"product_id":"9781681379272","title":"A Fortunate Man","description":"\u003cb\u003eA Nobel Prize-winner's unforgettable novel about a man who sheds the stifling country life of his childhood for the excitement of Copenhagen.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThis masterpiece of Danish literature, admired by the likes of Georg Lukács and Ernst Bloch, is now available in a new English translation.\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eA Fortunate Man \u003c\/i\u003etells the story of Per Sidenius, a Lutheran pastor's son who revolts against his family and flees the backwaters of Jutland for Copenhagen. Per is handsome, ambitious, and hungry for the technological future of the twentieth century. He studies engineering and draws up plans for a new port and new canals, for harnessing wind and wave energy to transform Denmark into a commercial giant. Fully persuaded of his own genius, Per first repels and then attracts Jakobe Salomon, a young Jewish woman whose family is eager to underwrite his plans. They fall in love and get engaged; gradually Jakobe opens Per's eyes to the wider world. Meanwhile, he also falls under the spell of Dr. Nathan, a popular philosopher who rails against the conservative powers that be. But ultimately these powers win out, Per's relationship with Jakobe founders, and he goes home to Jutland and marries a pastor's daughter. Though fortunate, he is never happy.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eOne of the last great nineteenth-century novels and Henrik Pontoppidan's masterpiece, \u003ci\u003eA Fortunate Man \u003c\/i\u003eanatomizes and skewers Danish society, from the small towns to the metropolis. Paul Larkin's dazzling translation brings out the wide range and full force of a novel admired by Georg Lukács and praised by Ernst Bloch as \"one of the foundational texts of world literature.\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eThis translation was funded in part by a grant from the Danish Arts Foundation. \u003c\/i\u003e","brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":56302306328949,"sku":"9781681379272","price":27.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0612\/7193\/3106\/files\/9781681379272_4f48bb59-9b60-4027-9019-da9c03dd4ad3.jpg?v=1786024624"},{"product_id":"9781841593906","title":"Lucky Per","description":"\u003cp\u003eSocial realism and fairy tale combine in \u003ci\u003eLucky Per\u003c\/i\u003e, a \u003ci\u003ebildungsroman\u003c\/i\u003e about the ambitious son of a clergyman who rejects his faith and flees a restricted life in rural Jutland for Denmark's capital city. Per is a gifted young man who firmly believes that 'you had to hunt down luck as if it were a wild creature, a crooked-fanged beast ... and capture and bind it'. He falls in with Copenhagen's Jewish community, and falls for Jakobe Salomon, a wealthy heiress, who is not only the strongest character in the book but among the great Jewish heroines of European literature.\u003cbr\u003e   Per becomes obsessed with a grand engineering scheme that he believes will both reshape Denmark's landscape and correct its minor position in the world. Eventually personal and his career ambitions alike come to grief.  At the heart of \u003ci\u003eLucky Per\u003c\/i\u003e lies the question of the relationship of 'luck' to 'happiness' (the Danish word in the title can have both meanings), a relationship which Per comes to view differently by the end of his life.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":56308310049141,"sku":"9781841593906","price":12.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0612\/7193\/3106\/files\/9781841593906_d820d636-e4b8-4504-88d6-023c6a0fbd5a.jpg?v=1786027835"},{"product_id":"9781681379296","title":"The White Bear","description":"\u003cb\u003eLove, faith, and the political mingle in these two short novels by a Nobel Prize-winning Danish author. One about a young couple making a new life in Rome, the other about a priest who goes to live among native peoples in Greenland, both books explore the reaches of the human heart through their complex and unforgettable characters.\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eHenrik Pontoppidan, the Danish Nobel laureate, is admired for the concentrated force of his novellas as much as for long, populous, world-encompassing novels like \u003ci\u003eA Fortunate Man, \u003c\/i\u003eand here are two of those novellas, newly and brilliantly translated by Paul Larkin.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eThe White Bear\u003c\/i\u003e follows the fate of the odd, gangly, red-bearded Thorkild Müller. Born in rural Jutland and destined for the ministry, Thorkild proves to be a poor student and is assigned to a remote Inuit tribe in Greenland. There, with his mythic-looking staff and dogskin skullcap, he becomes known as the White Bear—a beloved legend among the locals and a freewheeling embarrassment to his fellow priests. Grown old, he returns to Denmark, where again his flock adores him while his fellow men of cloth try to tame the \"whirling dervish in their midst.\" In the end Thorkild mysteriously disappears, presumably back to the snow wilderness of Greenland.\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThe Rearguard, \u003c\/i\u003eon the other hand, is a marriage story. Newlyweds Jørgen Hallager and Ursula Branth are as different as night and day. The brash son of a poor village teacher, Jørgen is an avowed socialist whose revolutionary beliefs translate into his work as a painter of social realism; Ursula comes from a conservative, upper-middle-class family. At first, as they start their married life in Rome, they each try to change the other's worldview with arguments and threats, but as time wears on and they wear each other down, it becomes clear there can be no reconciliation. It is a tragic tale of art and idealism, individuality and love.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eThis translation was funded in part by a grant from the Danish Arts Foundation. \u003c\/i\u003e","brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":56312750309749,"sku":"9781681379296","price":15.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0612\/7193\/3106\/files\/9781681379296_223c3d5d-8358-45de-ae59-04b79fa7791a.jpg?v=1786024625"}],"url":"https:\/\/backstory.london\/collections\/author-henrik-pontoppidan.oembed","provider":"Backstory","version":"1.0","type":"link"}