By the Winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature "[Sigrid Undset] should be the next Elena Ferrante . . . whose huge commercial success suggests there is a market for series in translation about fierce, complicated women navigating their culturally conservative European milieu. . . . If HBO is looking for its next miniseries, it should give
Kristin Lavransdatter the proper adaptation it deserves. Rereading the trilogy this fall, I kept thinking of
Olive Kitteridge, another powerful novel about a prickly mother turned into a worthy HBO miniseries. This trilogy includes illicit sex, affairs, a church fire, an attempted rape, ocean voyages, rebellious virgins cooped up in a convent, predatory priests, an attempted human sacrifice, floods, fights, murders, violent suicide, a gay king, drunken revelry, the Bubonic Plague, deathbed confessions, and sex that makes its heroine ache 'with astonishment–that this was the iniquity that all the songs were about.' " –
Ruth Graham, Slate "[My favorite fictional hero or heroine is] probably Sigrid Undset's strong-willed, sensual, self-destructive and ultimately rock-solid Kristin Lavransdatter. . . . Kristin's eponymous trilogy bears many rereadings. Right away one somehow identifies with this daughter of medieval Norway; soon one compassionates her in her sufferings. . . . For all her faults [she] inspires love in many around her, including this reader. Her faith and loyalty make her quite beautiful to me. Like Murasaki and Dos Passos, Undset tells the story of a whole life." –
William T. Vollman, The New York Times Book Review "Wildly rewarding . . . Kristin's saga, rich with detail, has shades of
Tess of the d'Urbervilles' tragedy and
Brideshead Revisited's piety, but more than anything, the story is deeply
human. . . . Her journey from maid to sinner to pilgrim to matriarch . . . is gorgeous, fresh, and propulsive in Nunnally's translation." –
The Atlantic "We consider it the best book our judges have ever selected and it has been better received by our subscribers than any other book." –
Book-of-the-Month Club "The finest historical novel our 20th century has yet produced; indeed it dwarfs most of the fiction of any kind that Europe has produced in the last twenty years." –
Contemporary Movements in European Literature "As a novel it must be ranked with the greatest the world knows today." –
Montreal Star "Sigrid Undset's trilogy embodies more of life, seen understandingly and seriously . . . than any novel since Dostoevsky's
Brothers Karamazov. It is also very probably the noblest work of fiction ever to have been inspired by the Catholic art of life." –
Commonweal "The first great story founded upon the normal events of a normal woman's existence. It is as great and as rich, as simple and as profound, as such a story should be." –
Des Moines Register "No other novelist, past or present, has bodied forth the medieval world with such richness and fullness of indisputable genius. . . . One of the finest minds in European literature." –
New York Herald Tribune "A master . . . writing in a prose as vigorous, articulate and naturalistic as the novel it re-creates, Tiina Nunnally brilliantly captures a world both remote and strangely familiar." –
Judges' citation, PEN/Book-of-the-Month Club Translation Prize