A true neglected classic, this sweeping 1904 novel is a Modernist
masterpiece and arguably the great Danish novel-- but is only newly
available in English.
Lucky Per is a bildungsroman about the ambitious son of a clergyman
who rejects his faith and flees his restricted life in the Danish
countryside for the capital city. Per is a gifted young man who arrives
in Copenhagen believing that you had to hunt down luck as if it were a
wild creature, a crooked-fanged beast . . . and capture and bind it.
Per's love interest, a Jewish heiress, is both the strongest character
in the book and one of the greatest Jewish heroines of European
literature. Per becomes obsessed with a grand engineering scheme that he
believes will reshape both Denmark's landscape and its minor place in
the world; eventually, both his personal and his career ambitions come
to grief. At its heart, the story revolves around the question of the
relationship of luck to happiness (the Danish word in the title can have
both meanings), a relationship Per comes to see differently by the end
of his life.