Novel
The Fourth Night Watch
Den fjerde nattevakt
Johan Falkberget · 1923
Synopsis
During the Napoleonic Wars, the pastor Benjamin Sigismund arrives in Røros, a mining town in the mountains, and is soon loved by his parishioners; the sexton Ol-Kanelesa becomes his guide. Married without love to Katrine, he falls in love with Gunhild Bonde, a young woman married against her will to the miner David Finne. Aschehoug's presentation announces this passion as doomed to fail, and the novel follows what it does to the priest's faith and to the lives of those around him.
Context
The novel appeared in 1923. Its title refers to the Gospel of Matthew, in which Jesus comes to his disciples walking on the sea “in the fourth watch of the night”. Carl Fredrik Engelstad adapted it for the Norwegian Theatre in 1956, and Norwegian television gave in 1960 a version written by Aasta Falkberget. Per Amdam sees in it characters whom suffering transforms and frees. Marguerite Gay and Gerd de Mautort translated it with Plon in 1960, and the University of Wisconsin Press published it in English in 1968.
Who it is for
Translated into French and English: a drama of passion and conscience in a mining town, at the beginning of the nineteenth century.
Prizes and reception
The novel of its author's breakthrough, counted among his principal works and included in several canons of Norwegian literature.
Sources for this page 6
The pages consulted to check this page.