Novel
The Family at Gilje
Familien paa Gilje
Jonas Lie · 1883
Opening lines
Det var en klar, kold Eftermiddag oppe i Fjeldbygden.
It was a clear, cold afternoon up in the mountain village.
Translation by Erostrate
Text quoted from bokselskap.no
Synopsis
Rural Norway, the 1840s. At Gilje, an isolated mountain post, Captain Jæger leads a family of modest means, well-intentioned but hot-tempered, while his wife wears herself out keeping up appearances. The daughters have no future but marriage. Thinka, the eldest, loves a poor clerk, but her father has an older and better-established man in mind for her. Inger-Johanne, the younger, beautiful and gifted, the captain's favourite, goes away to town for a year, and a brilliant match is expected of her.
Context
The novel appeared in 1883, with, as subtitle in its English version, the announcement of a domestic story of the 1840s. Britannica ranks it among the classics of Norwegian literature and sees in it a book on the condition of women, the most debated question of its time; it is also read as a portrayal of the little choice left to officers' daughters. It was translated into English as early as 1920, then by Marie Wells in 2012, and into French by Jean Renaud in 2007.
Who it is for
A little under two hundred pages in French, in Jean Renaud's translation published in Nantes in 2007.
Prizes and reception
Its author's most famous novel, regarded as a classic of the country and translated into both English and French.
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