A Fortunate Man

A Nobel Prize-winners 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 Lukács and Ernst Bloch, is now available in a new English translation.

A Fortunate Man tells the story of Per Sidenius, a Lutheran pastors 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 Pers 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, Pers relationship with Jakobe founders, and he goes home to Jutland and marries a pastors daughter. Though fortunate, he is never happy.

One of the last great nineteenth-century novels and Henrik Pontoppidans masterpiece, A Fortunate Man anatomizes and skewers Danish society, from the small towns to the metropolis. Paul Larkins 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."

This translation was funded in part by a grant from the Danish Arts Foundation.