Ditte Everywoman

(Complete Edition: Girl Alive. Daughter of Man. Towards the Stars.)

Novel by Martin Andersen Nexø

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).

Another of Nexo's classic's is "Ditte", which consists of 3 parts.

Description:

How few are the really first-rate novels interpreting a poor woman's life! There is, of course, Martin Andersen Nexø's classic "Ditte," and there is—well, there is "Ditte." A long rich work in three volumes, full of the kind of poetic detail found only in books like Gorki's and O'Casey's autobiographies, it has been generally unobtainable in this country for a long time now.

In the first volume of the trilogy, Ditte is truly, "Girl Alive," alive to all the bittersweet experiences of life in a poor family struggling for survival. The locale is Denmark, peasant country. But it becomes sharply here and now by virtue of Nexø's masterful understanding of social forces. The second and third volumes ("Daughter of Man" and "Towards The Stars") carry Ditte into maturity from her servant days at the Hill Farm to work in the capital city, Copenhagen.

Nexø's writing is magnificent throughout: the giant simplicity of an enduring folk tale. Ditte, growing up to young womanhood, is revealed in her complexities, her doubts and her rainbow joys. She participates in all experiences, hers is no shallow stream of consciousness, but a plunging into the moving current of life: Above the small talk of "the woman's angle" and "modern woman—lost, borrowed, or benighted," stands Ditte, Everywoman.

ISBN: 9781595690333

Language: English

Subjects: Fiction (Classic, History, Denmark, Working Class)

Pages: 536

Book Type: 5.5 x 8.5 in, Perfect Bound - Paperback)

ORDER:

In the US:
Mondial Bookstore
Amazon.com
Barnes&Nobles

In the UK:
Amazon.co.uk

In Canada:
Amazon.ca

"Nexø's writing is magnificent throughout: the giant simplicity of an enduring folk tale..."