The novel follows the character Pelle Karlsson, who immigrates to Denmark from Sweden in 1877 at age eight. At 18, he moves from Bornholm to Copenhagen, and becomes a leader in the labour movement in Denmark, motivated by poor working conditions.
DigiCat Publishing presents to you this special edition of "Pelle the Conqueror — Complete" by Martin Andersen Nexø. DigiCat Publishing considers every written word to be a legacy of humankind. Every DigiCat book has been carefully reproduced for republishing in a new modern format. The books are available in print, as well as ebooks. DigiCat hopes you will treat this work with the acknowledgment and passion it deserves as a classic of world literature.
Complete edition (Parts I to IV): I. Boyhood; II. Apprenticeship; III. The Great Struggle; IV. Daybreak. Martin Andersen Nexo (1869-1954) was born in the slums of Copenhagen into extreme poverty. He was the fourth of eleven children. His father, a stone mason, was an alcoholic and his mother was a daughter of a blacksmith. When he was eight, the family moved to the town of Nexo on the island of Bornholm, whose name he adopted in 1894 as his own. His breakthrough work, the Danish classic Pelle the Conqueror, appeared between 1906 (Part I) and 1910 (Part IV). It tells the story of Pelle, a poor boy, whose life in Part I shares much similarities with Nexø's. "The great charm of the book lies in the fact that the writer knows the poor from within; he has not studied them as an outsider may, but has lived with them and felt with them, at once a participant and a keen-eyed spectator. He is no sentimentalist, and so rich is his imagination that he passes on rapidly from one scene to the next, sketching often in a few pages what another novelist would be content to work out into long chapters or whole volumes. His sympathy is of the widest, and he makes us see tragedies behind the little comedies, and comedies behind the little tragedies, of the seemingly sordid lives of the working people whom he loves." (Otto Jespersen) "Pelle" has conquered the hearts of the reading public of Denmark and of the world. The first part of the book was filmed by Bille August; in 1989 the film won the Academy Award as Best Foreign Language Film.
Pelle is still just a young boy when his father decides to move them from Sweden to the Danish island of Bornholm in search of riches. Those riches—of course—being nonexistent, they fall into the life of farm laborers. As Pelle grows up among the other lowly and poor residents of the island, their cares and worries seep into him, and he finds himself part of a greater struggle for their dignity. Pelle the Conqueror has been compared to Victor Hugo’s Les Misérables in its themes and scope. Nexø had become involved in the Social Democratic movement in Denmark that flourished after the turn of the 19th century, and this work closely follows his journalistic observations of the struggles of the people. It was published in four books between 1906 and 1910, and was immensely popular; the first book in particular is still widely read in Danish schools, and was made in to an award-winning 1987 film starring Max von Sydow as Father Lasse. In this Standard Ebooks edition books one and four are translated by Jesse Muir, while books two and three are translated by Bernard Miall. This book is part of the Standard Ebooks project, which produces free public domain ebooks.
Focusing on the intersection of literature and politics since the beginning of the 20th century, this book examines authors, historical figures, major literary and political works, national literatures, and literary movements to reveal the intrinsic links between literature and history. Literary works have often engaged political issues, and many political writings give close attention to literary concerns. This encyclopedia explores the complex relationship between literature and politics through detailed entries written by expert contributors on authors, historical figures, major literary and political works, national literatures, and literary movements, covering specific themes, concepts, and genres related to literature and politics from the 20th century to the present. The work covers cover authors that include Margaret Atwood, James Baldwin, Philip K. Dick, W.E.B. Du Bois, William Faulkner, Ernest Hemingway, Jack London, Toni Morrison, George Orwell, John Steinbeck, and Virginia Woolf, just to mention a few. International in scope, Literature and Politics Today: The Political Nature of Modern Fiction, Poetry, and Drama covers writing ranging from the beginning of the 20th century to the present, with special emphasis on works written in English. The content of the some 150 alphabetically arranged entries is ideal for high school students working on assignments involving literature to explore such current yet historically ongoing social issues as censorship and propaganda. This book is appropriate for public libraries where it will serve to support student research and to help general readers learn more about enduring political concerns through literary works. Academic libraries will find this reference a valuable guide for undergraduates studying literature, history, political science, law, and other disciplines.
Children in Culture is one of the first fully multi- and interdisciplinary collections of essays on theoretical approaches to childhood and formulates and presents new and exciting ideas about the construction of childhood as a cultural identity. The ten original chapters have been written especially for this volume by some of the most eminent writers on childhood in their fields: psychology (Valerie Walkerdine; Rex and Wendy Stainton Rogers), history (Jenny Bourne Taylor; Kimberly Reynolds; Paul Yates), critical theory (Erica Burman), literary criticism (Margarida Morgado; Sara Thornton), children's literature criticism (Karin Lesnik-Oberstein; Stephen Thomson), and film and drama theory (Joe Kelleher).