Best Selling Books by Sigrid Undset

“[Sigrid Undset] should be the next Elena Ferrante.” —Slate The turbulent historical masterpiece of Norway’s literary master A Penguin Classic In her great historical epic Kristin Lavransdatter, set in fourteenth-century Norway, Nobel laureate Sigrid Undset tells the life story of one passionate and headstrong woman. Painting a richly detailed backdrop, Undset immerses readers in the day-to-day life, social conventions, and political and religious undercurrents of the period. Now in one volume, Tiina Nunnally’s award-winning definitive translation brings this remarkable work to life with clarity and lyrical beauty. As a young girl, Kristin is deeply devoted to her father, a kind and courageous man. But when as a student in a convent school she meets the charming and impetuous Erlend Nikulaussøn, she defies her parents in pursuit of her own desires. Her saga continues through her marriage to Erlend, their tumultuous life together raising seven sons as Erlend seeks to strengthen his political influence, and finally their estrangement as the world around them tumbles into uncertainty. With its captivating heroine and emotional potency, Kristin Lavransdatter is the masterwork of Norway’s most beloved author—one of the twentieth century’s most prodigious and engaged literary minds—and, in Nunnally’s exquisite translation, a story that continues to enthrall. This Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition includes an introduction by Brad Leithauser and features French flaps and deckle-edged paper. For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.

Happy Times in Norway is a moving and delicately humorous picture of Sigrid Undset’s blissful home life before her nation fell to the Nazi occupation. Infused with the wish that those cherished days could return, Undset captures the excitement of a Norwegian Christmas, the Seventeenth of May, summer in the idyllic mountains, and the chaotic adventure of raising two energetic boys.

The second volume in the Nobel Prize–winning writer’s epic of medieval Norway, finely capturing Undset’s fluid, natural style in a new English translation, the first in nearly a century As Norway moves into the fourteenth century, the kingdom continues to be racked by political turmoil and bloody family vendettas that serve as the backdrop for Sigrid Undset’s masterful story about Olav Audunssøn and Ingunn Steinfinnsdatter. Betrothed as children and raised as foster siblings, their unbridled love for each other sets in motion a series of dire events—with a legacy of betrayal, murder, and disgrace that will echo for generations. In Providence, the second of Olav Audunssøn’s four volumes, Olav settles in at his ancestral estate of Hestviken and soon brings Ingunn home as his wife. Both hope to put their troubles behind them as they start a new life together, but the crimes and shameful secrets of the past have a long reach and a tenacious hold. The consequences of sin, suspicion, and familial obligations may prove a greater threat to the pair’s happiness than even their long years of separation. Set in a time when royalty and religion vie for power, and bloodlines and loyalties are effectively law, Providence summons a powerful picture of Northern life in the medieval era, as the Swedish Academy noted in awarding Undset the Nobel Prize. Conveying both the intimate drama of Olav and Ingunn’s marriage and the epic sweep of their story, it is at once a moving and vivid recreation of a vanished world tainted by bloodshed and haunted by sin and retribution. As with her classic Kristin Lavransdatter, Sigrid Undset immersed herself in legal, religious, and historical writings to create in Olav Audunssøn an astoundingly authentic and compelling portrait of Norwegian life in the Middle Ages. And as in her translation of Kristin Lavransdatter, Tiina Nunnally does full justice to Undset’s fluid prose. Undset’s writing style is by turns straightforward and delicately lyrical, conveying the natural world, the complex culture, and the fraught emotional territory against which Olav’s story inexorably unfolds.

Jenny Winge, a young Norwegian artist, lives abroad in Rome at the turn of the 20th century, socialising with fellow Bohemian expats and aspiring to a life of passionate creative work and personal integrity. When another Norwegian seeking freedom from the austere Protestant atmosphere at home enters her circle, she finds herself succumbing to a desire for affection and companionship that leads her to compromise her ideals. One failed relationship leads to another and soon Jenny is pregnant out of wedlock, facing a life far different from her dreams. Tiina Nunnally has here rendered the Nobel Prize-winning author''s first major novel into fresh and vivid prose - and restored passages missing from the novel''s first English translation. Marked by lush painterly descriptions and unflinching honesty in matters of the heart, Jenny is an exquisite and devastating account of one woman''s search for autonomy. Unsparing, yet glowing with compassion, this novel of the struggle for emancipation feels as fresh today as when it was first written.

“[Sigrid Undset] should be the next Elena Ferrante.” —Slate A Penguin Classic Kristin Lavransdatter interweaves political, social, and religious history with the daily aspects of family life to create a colorful, richly detailed tapestry of Norway during the fourteenth-century. The trilogy, however, is more than a journey into the past. Undset''s own life—her familiarity with Norse sagas and folklore and with a wide range of medieval literature, her experiences as a daughter, wife, and mother, and her deep religious faith—profoundly influenced her writing. Her grasp of the connections between past and present and of human nature itself, combined with the extraordinary quality of her writing, sets her works far above the genre of "historical novels." This new translation by Tina Nunnally—the first English version since Charles Archer''s translation in the 1920s—captures Undset''s strengths as a stylist. Nunnally, an award-winning translator, retains the natural dialog and lyrical flow of the original Norwegian, with its echoes of Old Norse legends, while deftly avoiding the stilted language and false archaisms of Archer''s translation. In addition, she restores key passages left out of that edition. Undset''s ability to present a meticulously accurate historical portrait without sacrificing the poetry and narrative drive of masterful storytelling was particularly significant in her homeland. Granted independence in 1905 after five hundred years of foreign domination, Norway was eager to reclaim its national history and culture. Kristin Lavransdatter became a touchstone for Undset''s contemporaries, and continues to be widely read by Norwegians today. In the more than 75 years since it was first published, it has also become a favorite throughout the world. For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.

“[Sigrid Undset] should be the next Elena Ferrante.” —Slate A Penguin Classic Kristin Lavransdatter interweaves political, social, and religious history with the daily aspects of family life to create a colorful, richly detailed tapestry of Norway during the fourteenth-century. The trilogy, however, is more than a journey into the past. Undset''s own life—her familiarity with Norse sagas and folklore and with a wide range of medieval literature, her experiences as a daughter, wife, and mother, and her deep religious faith—profoundly influenced her writing. Her grasp of the connections between past and present and of human nature itself, combined with the extraordinary quality of her writing, sets her works far above the genre of "historical novels." This new translation by Tina Nunnally—the first English version since Charles Archer''s translation in the 1920s—captures Undset''s strengths as a stylist. Nunnally, an award-winning translator, retains the natural dialog and lyrical flow of the original Norwegian, with its echoes of Old Norse legends, while deftly avoiding the stilted language and false archaisms of Archer''s translation. In addition, she restores key passages left out of that edition. Undset''s ability to present a meticulously accurate historical portrait without sacrificing the poetry and narrative drive of masterful storytelling was particularly significant in her homeland. Granted independence in 1905 after five hundred years of foreign domination, Norway was eager to reclaim its national history and culture. Kristin Lavransdatter became a touchstone for Undset''s contemporaries, and continues to be widely read by Norwegians today. In the more than 75 years since it was first published, it has also become a favorite throughout the world. For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.

In this heart-wrenching novel by Sigrid Undset, The Cross brings Kristin’s story to a close as the final years of her life are consumed by the Black Death, in the final installment in the well-known Norwegian trilogy, Kristin Lavransdatter. Kristin Lavransdatter has lost almost everything she loves. As the Black Death rapidly approaches Norway, she once again has to decide what is most important to her. Kristin grapples with her failing marriage and wavering faith while attempting to support eight sons. The once charmingly reckless characters are now facing their greatest challenge yet: the inevitability of their diminishing lives. Completing the trilogy, Sigrid Undset’s third Kristin Lavransdatter book was originally published in 1922. The author’s colourful depiction of 14th century Norway is continued in this final volume as she provides a fascinatingly accurate insight into medieval Scandinavia. Proudly republished by Read & Co. Books, this new edition of The Cross features an excerpt from Six Scandinavian Novelists by Alrik Gustafrom. An essential addition to the bookshelves of Kristen Lavransdatter fans, this volume is the perfect end to the classic Norwegian series.

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.

Inspired by tales of the hero Vilmund Vidutan and his fellow knights, Sigurd Jonsson and his young friends Ivar and Helge set out to reenact these exploits on their medieval Norwegian farm. But when the summer is nearly over, the three boys stumble into real trouble and must prove their courage in an adventure all their own.

The collection includes the great novel Jenny, two short stories and selected letters.

Sigrid Undset is among the great modern writers of the twentieth century and was an adult convert to Catholicism. This forgotten treasure from the Nobel Prize–winning author of Kristin Lavransdatter is a fascinating collection of saints’ lives, a prophetic critique of modernity, and a surprisingly contemporary take on being Catholic—in particular a Catholic woman—in a sometimes-hostile secular world. Stages on the Road is a series of essays about the relationship between the Church and the modern world. In the spirit of G. K. Chesterton and C. S. Lewis, Undset points to inconsistencies, hypocrisies, and blind spots of the modern secular mindset by introducing readers to the stories of somewhat-forgotten Catholic figures like St. Angela Merici and the English martyrs Margaret Clitherow and Robert Southwell—people who stood fast to their faith in the face of both intellectual and political hostility. Undset tackles such topics as religious freedom, Christian/Muslim relations, and the vocation of women.

Nobel Prize winner Sigrid Undset presents an acclaimed biography of St. Catherine of Siena, a seminal 14th century woman of the Catholic Church. Undset''s biography of this remarkable saint is a compelling and inspirational read.

""I have been unfaithful to my husband." Marta Oulie''s opening line scandalized Norwegian readers in 1907. And yet, Sigrid Undset had a gift for depicting modern women "sympathetically but with merciless truthfulness," as the Swedish Academy noted in awarding her the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1928. At the time she was one of the youngest recipients and only the third woman so honored. It was Undset''s honest story of a young woman''s love life--"the immoral kind," as she herself bluntly put it--that made her first novel an instant sensation in Norway. Marta Oulie, written in the form of a diary, intimately documents the inner life of a young woman disappointed and constrained by the conventions of marriage as she longs for an all-consuming passion. Set in Kristiania (now Oslo) at the beginning of the twentieth century, Undset''s book is an incomparable psychological portrait of a woman whose destiny is defined by the changing mores of her day--as she descends, inevitably, into an ever-darker reckoning. Remarkably, though Undset''s other works have attracted generations of readers, Marta Oulie has never before appeared in English translation. Tiina Nunnally, whose award-winning translation of Undset''s Kristin Lavransdatter captured the author''s beautifully clear style, conveys the voice of Marta Oulie with all the stark poignancy of the original Norwegian."--

The four stories are Selma Broter, Thjodolf, Miss SmithTellefsen, and Simonsen.