SELMA LAGERLÖF - A Wonderful Adventure - Talk on Zoom 4 August 2020

SELMA LAGERLÖF – A WONDERFUL ADVENTURE

When: Tuesdau 4 August 2020 (19:00 - 20:00)

Where: Zoom

Paul Binding is a literary critic, novelist, and a renowned expert in Scandinavian literature.

A lifelong passion for Scandinavian literature and a determination to go to Sweden began when he was given a copy of Selma Lagerlöf’s most universally famous book, Nils Holgersson’s Wonderful Journey, for his tenth birthday.

Paul describes Selma Lagerlöf (1858-1940) as a truly great writer, profound, original and virtuous. She was the first woman to be awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature and to become a member of the Swedish Academy.

Nils Holgersson’s Wonderful Journey has been recently translated into English by Peter Graves. Reviewing the translation in the Times Literary Supplement, Paul Binding wrote, ‘The Personal is the geographical, the geographical becomes the personal, and Peter Graves’ superb, attentively faithful new rendering of Selma Lagerlöf’s masterpiece makes us understand this truth afresh’.

After spending his early childhood in Germany, Paul returned to England and studied English literature at Oxford. A former managing editor for Oxford University Press and an editor for the New Statesman, he frequently contributes reviews to the Times Literary Supplement and The Literary Review. He is the author of a prize-winning full-length study of Hans Christian Andersen, European Witness and is the translator of Andersen’s The Ice Virgin and A Story from the Dunes. His novel The Stranger from the Sea (2019) draws on Ibsen’s Lady from the Sea. Paul will be accompanied by Sophie Nilsson who will read passages from Selma Lagerlöf’s writings.

The talk will cover all years of Lagerlöf’s productivity, from the phenomenal successful early work, Gösta Berling's Saga, to the masterpieces of her later years, above all the superb trilogy, The Löwensköld Ring and her recreation of her childhood home, Mårbacka.

The Norvik Press has, in recent years, issued a series of fine new translations of Lagerlöf’s major fiction.

This FREE talk is open to members AND non-members. Please register by email and login details will be sent nearer the time.

To find out more: https://www.angloswedishsociety.org.uk/events/

To register for participation: RSVP@angloswedishsociety.org.uk