A Fortunate Man by Henrik Pontoppidan
A Nobel Prize-winner's unforgettable novel about a man who sheds the stifling country life of his childhood for the excitement of Copenhagen.This masterpiece of Danish literature, admired by the likes of Georg Lukacs and Ernst Bloch, is now available in a new English translation.
A Fortunate Man tells 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.
One of the last great nineteenth-century novels and Henrik Pontoppidan's masterpiece, A Fortunate Man anatomizes 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 Lukacs and praised by Ernst Bloch as "one of the foundational texts of world literature."
This translation was funded in part by a grant from the Danish Arts Foundation.
HENRIK PONTOPPIDAN (1857-1943) was a Danish novelist who won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1917 for his authentic descriptions of present-day life in Denmark. The son of a rural minister, he moved to Copenhagen as a young man and eventually earned his living as a journalist and writer. He is best known for the sweeping social novels he wrote between 1890 and the 1920s, which reflect the social, religious, and political struggles of the time.
| SKU | Unavailable |
| ISBN 13 | 9781681379272 |
| ISBN 10 | 1681379279 |
| Title | A Fortunate Man |
| Author | Henrik Pontoppidan |
| Condition | Unavailable |
| Binding Type | Paperback |
| Publisher | New York Review Books |
| Year published | 2025-06-10 |
| Number of pages | 768 |
| Cover note | Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary. |
| Note | Unavailable |