A Fortunate Man

At the height of his powers, the son of a poor religious minister, Per Sidenius, is a 'Fortunate Man'. He has the whole of the approaching twentieth century in his grasp: a fabulously rich Jewish heiress as a soon to be wife; burgeoning fame as a forward and free thinking man of the 'New Age'; success in having put his sorry childhood behind him. But just as he reaches the lofty heights of bourgeois success, Per begins to deeply question his life. A series of events then unfold which Nobel Prize winning author Henrik Pontoppidan describes with unflinching honesty and intensely human passion. Here is the hectic foment of social debate, the unrepentant greed of finance sharks, the hot coals of pure and illicit love. Then the biggest questions of all -- who am I and what have I to do? With A Fortunate Man [Lykke-Per] one of Denmarks greatest ever writers manages not only to sound the depths of his nations soul but also to paint a huge European canvas stretching from vintage Copenhagen to the sultry heat of Rome at the turn of the nineteenth century. A truly breath-taking novel, heralded by such influential figures as Thomas Mann and Georg Lukacs as a seminal work, which places Henrik Pontoppidan alongside Dostoevsky and Charles Dickens as one of the true greats of modern European literature. Henrik Pontoppidan (1857-1943) was a major Danish realist writer who won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1917 for his authentic descriptions of present-day life in Denmark. His novels include The Promised Land, A Fortunate Man and The Kingdom of the Dead.