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Gunnar's Daughter

Author Sigrid Undset

Edited by Sherrill Harbison

Translated by Arthur G. Chater

Paperback

$16.00 US

Penguin Adult HC/TR | Penguin Classics

5.1"W x 7.7"H x 0.5"D (13.0 x 19.6 x 1.3 cm) | 6 oz (181 g) | 64 per carton

On sale Apr 01, 1998 | 208 Pages | 9780141180205

Sales rights: US, Canada, Open Mkt

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The first historical novel by the Nobel Prize-winning author of Kristin Lavransdatter

A Penguin Classic

More than a decade before writing Kristin Lavransdatter, the trilogy about fourteenth-century Norway that won her the Nobel Prize, Sigrid Undset published Gunnar’s Daughter, a brief, swiftly moving tale about a more violent period of her country’s history, the Saga Age. Set in Norway and Iceland at the beginning of the eleventh century, Gunnar's Daughter is the story of the beautiful, spoiled Vigdis Gunnarsdatter, who is raped by the man she had wanted to love. A woman of courage and intelligence, Vigdis is toughened by adversity. Alone she raises the child conceived in violence, repeatedly defending her autonomy in a world governed by men. Alone she rebuilds her life and restores her family's honor—until an unremitting social code propels her to take the action that again destroys her happiness.

First published in 1909, Gunnar's Daughter was in part a response to the rise of nationalism and Norway's search for a national identity in its Viking past. But unlike most of the Viking-inspired art of its period, Gunnar's Daughter is not a historical romance. It is a skillful conversation between two historical moments about questions as troublesome in Undset's own time—and in ours—as they were in the Saga Age: rape and revenge, civil and domestic violence, troubled marriages, and children made victims of their parents' problems.

By the Winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature

“A better told story of its kind would be difficult to imagine, for Sigrid Undset has retained the directness and concise power of the old Norse and Icelandic sagas. . . . Beautifully told; already so early in her career [Undset] had learned the true meaning of form and proportion, pace and suspense.” —The New York Times

Sigrid Undset is a major figure in early-twentieth-century literature. A Norwegian born in Denmark in 1881, she worked with the Norwegian underground during the Second World War, fled to Sweden in 1940, and later came to the United States. She is the author of many works of fiction as well as several books for young readers and a number of nonfiction titles. Her novels encompass a variety of settings and time periods, ranging from medieval romances such as the Kristin Lavransdatter trilogy—generally considered to be her masterwork—and The Master of Hestviken tetralogy to modern novels such as The Winding Road, Ida Elisabeth, and The Faithful Wife. She was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1928. Sigrid Undset died in 1949. View titles by Sigrid Undset

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