Garth Risk Hallberg and Morten Høi Jensen discuss this sweeping 1904 Modernist masterpiece known as “the great Danish novel,” recently released in its first English translation. In this bildungsroman about the ambitious son of a clergyman who rejects his faith and flees his restricted life in the Danish countryside for the capital city, Per is a gifted young man who arrives in Copenhagen believing that “you had to hunt down luck as if it were a wild creature, a crooked-fanged beast . . . and capture and bind it.” Per’s love interest, a Jewish heiress, is both the strongest character in the book and one of the greatest Jewish heroines of European literature. Per becomes obsessed with a grand engineering scheme that he believes will reshape both Denmark’s landscape and its minor place in the world; eventually, both his personal and his career ambitions come to grief.
At its heart, the story revolves around the question of the relationship of “luck” to “happiness” (the Danish word in the title can have both meanings), a relationship Per comes to see differently by the end of his life.
The novel has recently been released in a new translation in English with an introduction by Garth Risk Hallberg. Following the discussion, copies of the book will be available for purchase and signing.
The new film A Fortunate Man based on the book also screens at Scandinavia House on Wednesday, April 17 & Friday, April 19.
This program has been supported by the Rev. Lars R. Lund Fund for Nordic Literature.
From Scandinavia House.
