{"product_id":"the-white-bear-isbn-9781681379296","title":"The White Bear","description":"\u003cb\u003eLove, faith, and the political mingle in these two short novels by a Nobel Prize-winning Danish author. One about a young couple making a new life in Rome, the other about a priest who goes to live among native peoples in Greenland, both books explore the reaches of the human heart through their complex and unforgettable characters.\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eHenrik Pontoppidan, the Danish Nobel laureate, is admired for the concentrated force of his novellas as much as for long, populous, world-encompassing novels like \u003ci\u003eA Fortunate Man, \u003c\/i\u003eand here are two of those novellas, newly and brilliantly translated by Paul Larkin.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eThe White Bear\u003c\/i\u003e follows the fate of the odd, gangly, red-bearded Thorkild Müller. Born in rural Jutland and destined for the ministry, Thorkild proves to be a poor student and is assigned to a remote Inuit tribe in Greenland. There, with his mythic-looking staff and dogskin skullcap, he becomes known as the White Bear—a beloved legend among the locals and a freewheeling embarrassment to his fellow priests. Grown old, he returns to Denmark, where again his flock adores him while his fellow men of cloth try to tame the \"whirling dervish in their midst.\" In the end Thorkild mysteriously disappears, presumably back to the snow wilderness of Greenland.\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThe Rearguard, \u003c\/i\u003eon the other hand, is a marriage story. Newlyweds Jørgen Hallager and Ursula Branth are as different as night and day. The brash son of a poor village teacher, Jørgen is an avowed socialist whose revolutionary beliefs translate into his work as a painter of social realism; Ursula comes from a conservative, upper-middle-class family. At first, as they start their married life in Rome, they each try to change the other's worldview with arguments and threats, but as time wears on and they wear each other down, it becomes clear there can be no reconciliation. It is a tragic tale of art and idealism, individuality and love.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eThis translation was funded in part by a grant from the Danish Arts Foundation. \u003c\/i\u003e\"Henrik Pontoppidan is a full-blooded storyteller who scrutinizes our lives and society so intensely that he ranks within the highest class of European writers.\" —Thomas Mann\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"The ice, the fjords, the harshness of lonely winter and the revitalizing light of summer . . . This is vivid writing, reminiscent of Knut Hamsun on landscape, and Halldór Laxness on the comedy of life.\" —Danny Morrison, \u003ci\u003eIrish Examiner\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e“These tales of universal struggles teem with keen insights.” —Publishers Weekly\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"Rife with cultural insight, no-holds-barred excoriations, and a firm conviction in the potential of the individual, \u003ci\u003eThe White Bear—\u003c\/i\u003ea newly published collection of [Pontoppidan's] novellas\u003ci\u003e—\u003c\/i\u003eprovides a valuable entrance into a writer deeply suspicious of the hypocrisies and repressions of modern life . . . Paul Larkin’s translation is both elegant and resounding.\" —Xiao Yue Shan, \u003ci\u003eAsymptote\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"A worthy introduction to Pontoppidan’s underread work . . . With his empathic portrayals of peasants and the down-and-out, his philosophical investigations into the soul, and his demands for reform among the clergy and greedy capitalists, Pontoppidan undeniably raised Danish social and political consciousness.\"\u003cbr\u003e—Christopher Urban, \u003ci\u003eCommonweal\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cb\u003eHenrik Pontoppidan\u003c\/b\u003e (1857–1943) was one of Denmark’s great realist writers, a member of the Modern Breakthrough movement whose works are often compared to those of Honoré de Balzac and Émile Zola. The son of a clergyman, he studied engineering in Copenhagen but then left to become a teacher and writer. For his numerous novels and short stories, he won the 1917 Nobel Prize for Literature. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePaul Larkin\u003c\/b\u003e is a journalist, filmmaker, critic, and translator from the Danish and other Scandinavian languages. In 1997 \u003ci\u003eThe Gap in the Mountain... Our Journey into Europe, \u003c\/i\u003ethe six-part film series he wrote and directed as an independent production for RTÉ, won him the European Journalist of the Year Award (the overall award and the film director category). In 2008, he was awarded the Best International Director prize at the New York Independent Film and Video Festival for his Irish-language docudrama \u003ci\u003eImeacht na nIarlaí \u003c\/i\u003e(The Flight of the Earls) starring Stephen Rea. He lives in a Gaeltacht area of County Donegal, Ireland, where Irish is the predominant language of everyday use.","brand":"NYRB Classics","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":46305198866661,"sku":"NP9781681379296","price":16.95,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1842\/7735\/files\/9781681379296.jpg?v=1767742192","url":"https:\/\/k12savings.com\/products\/the-white-bear-isbn-9781681379296","provider":"K12savings","version":"1.0","type":"link"}