Hello, i am looking to read some of the established classics which are defining for a specific country and somehow people acknowledge it to be the best book written in the land. It is indeed a subjective and open ended question but I will be grateful to receive suggestios.
Thank You
by Pristine-Pattern369
1 Comment
Greetings from Denmark! I’ll grant to a choice that I think merit your search. It is naturally a personal favorite but it also takes a central role in Danish literature, and is – of course – rarely mentioned, what with it being established classics and all.
“Niels Lyhne” by J.P. Jacobsen (J is pronounced as an ‘I’—there’s a specific reason for this that I’m not going to outline here, but yeah: J.P. is pronounced I.P.). A translation from 1896 is called Siren Voices, yet there are newer translations.
The novel was published in 1880, the same year as the Brothers Karamazov by Dostojevskij, and indeed it also seeks to grapple with fundamental questions. Yet, Jacobsen was a naturalist, the translator of Darwin’s origin of species to Danish, and a masterful poetic writer. The book is quite short but worth it. Rainer Maria Rilke, the poet, learned Danish just to read this novel.