Doctor Glas

by Hjalmar Soderberg, Tom Rachman, Rochelle Wright (Translator)

Overview

Stark, brooding, and enormously controversial when first published in 1905, this astonishing novel juxtaposes impressions of fin-de-siècle Stockholm against the psychological landscape of a man besieged by obsession. Lonely and introspective, Doctor Glas has long felt an instinctive hostility toward the odious local minister. So when the minister’s beautiful wife complains of her husband’s oppressive sexual attentions, Doctor Glas finds himself contemplating murder. A masterpiece of enduring power, Doctor Glas confronts a chilling moral quandary with gripping intensity.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781940436227
Publisher:	Catapult
Publication date:	06/01/2015
Sold by:	Penguin Random House Publisher Services
Format:	eBook
Pages:	156
Sales rank:	560,301
File size:	2 MB

About the Author

Hjalmar Söderberg (1869-1941) was one of the most distinguished of Scandinavian novelists. He was born and raised in Stockholm and spent the last twenty-five years of his life in Copenhagen. After working as a civil servant, he turned to journalism and eventually devoted himself full-time to a literary career. In addition to novels he wrote short stories and plays as well as literary criticism and philosophical works about religion. He has been praised for his fictional vignettes of Stockholm life and for being a forerunner in the use of psychoanalytic theory and stream-of-consciousness in his fiction. Söderberg's novels include Confusions, Martin Birck's Youth, and The Serious Game; Doctor Glas is regarded as his masterpiece.

Read an Excerpt

Stark, brooding, and enormously controversial when first published in 1905, this astonishing novel juxtaposes impressions of fin-de-siècle Stockholm against the psychological landscape of a man besieged by obsession. Lonely and introspective, Doctor Glas has long felt an instinctive hostility toward the odious local minister. So when the minister’s beautiful wife complains of her husband’s oppressive sexual attentions, Doctor Glas finds himself contemplating murder. A masterpiece of enduring power, Doctor Glas confronts a chilling moral quandary with gripping intensity.

Editorial Reviews

First published in 1905, Doctor Glas is considered to be Swedish novelist Hjalmar S derberg's masterpiece. The beautiful young wife of the repellant Reverend Gregorius confides to Glas that her sex life is making her miserable and begs for his help. Smitten with her, he agrees, even though she already has another lover. He does intervene, but when it becomes clear that the Reverend will not give up his "rights," Glas begins planning his murder. Arranged in the form of a journal, this fascinating, deeply moral (yet never moralizing) novel, trans. by Paul Britten Austin, offers the voyeuristic thrill of reading over the doctor's shoulder as he wrestles with his conscience. Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information.

Publishers Weekly

Splendid. . . . Söderberg [is] a marvellous writer.” –The New Yorker

“[Doctor Glas] not only sketches the light and shadows of its time, but maps territory still being explored by the writers of today. It is a volcano, shaking, about to erupt.” –The New York Times Book Review

“Elegant, vigorous, and tightly-knit. . . . One of those marvellous books that appears as fresh and vivid now as on the day it was published. . . . It occurs on the cusp of the nineteenth and the twentieth centuries, but it opens doors the novel has been opening ever since.” –Margaret Atwood, from the Introduction

"Imagine the classic nineteenth century drama featuring a tyrannical older man, his hapless daughter or young wife, and her caddish suitor, as in Balzac's Eugenie Grandet and Henry James's Washington Square, this time conjured up by a sensibility akin to Strindberg's and Ingmar Bergman's—and you begin to have an idea of the force and candor of this searing masterwork of Northern European literature. The retrieval of Doctor Glas in English is a bracing gift to hungry readers." —Susan Sontag

From the Publisher