Mårbacka

Selma Lagerlöf

Norvik Press, 2016 - Fiction - 270 pages

The property of Mårbacka in Värmland was where Selma Lagerlöf grew up, immersed in a tradition of storytelling. Financial difficulties led to the loss of the house, but Lagerlöf was later able to buy it back, rebuild and make it the centre of her world. The book Mårbacka, the first part of a trilogy written in 1922-32, can be read as many different things: memoir, fictionalised autobiography, even part of Lagerlöf's myth-making about her own successful career as an author. It is part social and family history, part mischievous satire in the guise of innocent, first-person child narration, part declaration of filial love.

Selma Lagerlöf (1858-1940) quickly established herself as a major author of novels and short stories, and her work has been translated into close to 50 languages. Most of the translations into English were made soon after the publication of the original Swedish texts and have long been out of date. This Norvik Press series, 'Lagerlöf in English', provides English-language readers with high-quality new translations of a selection of the Nobel Laureate's most important texts.

About the author

Selma Lagerlöf, winner of the Nobel Prize in 1909, was the first woman to be elected a member of the Swedish Academy. Her first novel, The Story of Gosta Berling (1891), assured her position as Sweden's greatest storyteller. She retold the folk tales of her native province, Varmland, in an original and poetic prose. As a woman writer, Lagerlöf gained a reputation as a naive purveyor of native traditions, but she herself compared writing a novel to solving a mathematical problem. Her artistry entails making her stories seem simple, but they are told with great attention to symbolism, psychology, and narrative technique. The Wonderful Adventures of Nils (1906) is a delightful fantasy written to teach children about Swedish geography, but it has found an international audience. Her third novel and masterpiece, Jerusalem (1901--02), the story of farmers from Dalarna who follow their faith to the Holy City, was widely praised for its insights into the lives of peasants searching for a spiritual ideal. During World War II, Lagerlöf helped many German artists and intellectuals escape the Nazis, even donating her gold Nobel Prize medal to a benefit fund to help Finland. She died of a stroke on March 16, 1940.

Bibliographic information

• Title: Mårbacka; Issue 69 of Norvik Press series B; Issue 69 of Series B
• Author: Selma Lagerlöf
• Translated by: Sarah Death
• Contributor: Helena Forsås-Scott
• Publisher: Norvik Press, 2016
• ISBN: 1909408298, 9781909408296
• Length: 270 pages
• Subjects: Fiction / Literary; Literary Criticism / European / Scandinavian