Novel
Garman and Worse
Garman og Worse
Alexander Lange Kielland · 1880
Opening lines
Intet er saa rummeligt som Havet, intet saa taalmodigt.
Nothing is as spacious as the sea, nothing so patient.
Translation by Erostrate
Text quoted from bokselskap.no
Synopsis
A trading town on the south-west coast of Norway, modelled on Stavanger. Two houses have long been linked there: the Garmans, patricians of the Sandsgaard estate, and the Worses, more modest partners who had a share in the firm Garman & Worse. Around the old consul revolve his daughter Rachel, a visiting cousin, an idealistic young man and Pastor Martens. The novel follows their rivalries, loves and ambitions in a society where the Church and money settle everything.
Context
The novel appeared in 1880 and was its author's first. It takes his native town as its setting, and Universalis reads in it a defence of personal freedom against the pressure of class and family, in the anti-bourgeois vein shared by Ibsen, Bjørnson and Lie. A sequel, Skipper Worse, told in 1882 the earlier history of the same families. W. W. Kettlewell translated it into English, and Olivier Gouchet into French in 2003, with its sequel, under the title Les aventures des Worse.
Who it is for
A novel with many characters, translated into French together with its sequel in a volume from Les Belles Lettres published in 2003.
Prizes and reception
The first novel by one of the four great Norwegian writers of his century, and one of his most famous.
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