Buying Options

Kindle Price:	$9.99
Sold by:	Macmillan Price set by seller.

Enter a promotion code or Gift Card

Share <Embed>

Shyness and Dignity by [Dag Solstad, Sverre Lyngstad]

Follow the Author

Dag Solstad

Shyness and Dignity Kindle Edition

by Dag Solstad (Author), Sverre Lyngstad (Translator) Format: Kindle Edition

22 ratings

See all formats and editions Hide other formats and editions

Price

New from

Used from

Kindle

"Please retry"

$9.99

—

Paperback

"Please retry"

$27.81

$23.93

$11.44

An Ibsen scholar falls desperately out of society—publication coinciding with Ibsen's 100th anniversary celebrations

In front of him, twenty-nine young men and women about the age of eighteen who looked at him and returned his greeting. He asked them to take out their school edition of The Wild Duck. He was once more struck by their hostile attitude toward him. But it couldn't be helped, he had a task to perform and was going through with it. It was from them as a group that he sensed that massive dislike sent forth by their bodies. Individually they could be very pleasant, but together, positioned like now, at their desks, they constituted a structural enmity, directed at him and all that he stood for.

Elias Rukla begins yet another day under the leaden Oslo sky. At the high school where he teaches, a novel insight into Ibsen's The Wild Duck grips him with a passion so intense that he barely notices the disinterest of his students. After the lesson, when a broken umbrella provokes an unpredictable rage, he barely notices the students' intense curiosity. He soon realizes, however, that this day will be the decisive day of his life.

With Shyness and Dignity, Dag Solstad - praised in Norway as one of the most innovative novelists of his generation - offers an intricate and richly drawn portrait of a man who feels irrevocably alienated from contemporary culture, politics, and, ultimately, humanity.

Print length

162 pages
Language

English
Publisher

Graywolf Press
Publication date

September 29, 2015
File size

824 KB
Page Flip

Enabled
Word Wise

Enabled
Enhanced typesetting

Enabled
See all details

Customers who bought this item also bought

Page 1 of 1 Start overPage 1 of 1

Dag Solstad
26
Kindle Edition
$6.75
Available for download now.
Dag Solstad
9
Kindle Edition
$14.43
Available for download now.
Peter Handke
45
Kindle Edition
$11.99
Available for download now.
Dag Solstad
3
Kindle Edition
$15.15
Available for download now.
Louis-Ferdinand Céline
431
Kindle Edition
$10.18
Available for download now.
Thomas Bernhard
97
Kindle Edition
$10.99
Available for download now.

Customers who viewed this item also viewed

Page 1 of 1 Start overPage 1 of 1

Dag Solstad
26
Kindle Edition
$6.75
Available for download now.

Amazon Business: Make the most of your Amazon Business account with exclusive tools and savings. Login nowAmazon Business : For business-only pricing, quantity discounts and FREE Shipping. Register a free business account

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Dag Solstad, a novelist and playwright, has won numerous prizes for his writing throughout Europe, including the prestigious Nordic Prize for Literature. This is the first English translation of his work. Solstad lives in both Oslo, Norway, and Berlin, Germany.

--This text refers to an alternate kindle_edition edition.

From Publishers Weekly

An Oslo academic who came of age in the way-out '60s shrinks back from the glaring modern age in Norwegian novelist and playwright Solstad's remarkably nuanced novel, his first to be translated into English. Elias Rukla, described in this stiff translation as "a rather sottish senior master in his fifties with a wife who had spread out a bit too much," is fed up after 25 years of teaching Ibsen's Wild Duck to increasingly apathetic 19-year-olds at Oslo's Fagerborg Secondary School. A breakdown following an incident with an umbrella and verbally abusing a student makes Elias recognize he has become obsolete. Accompanied by rueful thoughts of his aging but once beautiful wife, Eva Linde, the drama of Elias's life unfolds, from the memory of his friendship with Eva's first husband, the intellectual dynamo and Marxist Johan Corneliussen. Inseparable mates at university, the men engaged in vigorous discussions about philosophy and literature that stretched over days and numerous parties. But Johan inexplicably left for New York to join the capitalist quagmire he always railed against, abandoning Eva and their young child, a betrayal from which Elias never recovers. With sublime restraint and subtle modulation, Solstad conveys an entire age of sorrow and loss. (Aug.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to an alternate kindle_edition edition.

ASIN : B015CLZ6UA
Publisher : Graywolf Press (September 29, 2015)
Publication date : September 29, 2015
Language : English
File size : 824 KB
Text-to-Speech : Enabled
Screen Reader : Supported
Enhanced typesetting : Enabled
X-Ray : Not Enabled
Word Wise : Enabled
Print length : 162 pages
Lending : Not Enabled

Best Sellers Rank: #1,051,596 in Kindle Store (See Top 100 in Kindle Store)
- #36,311 in Literary Fiction (Kindle Store)
- #78,295 in Literary Fiction (Books)

Customer Reviews:
22 ratings

Customer reviews

5 star		48%
4 star		22%
3 star		12%
2 star		11%
1 star		7%

How are ratings calculated?

Top reviews from the United States

There was a problem filtering reviews right now. Please try again later.

Aicha Hind Rifai

A Masterpiece.

Reviewed in the United States on January 17, 2016

Verified Purchase

The novella starts with Elias Rukla- senior high school teacher of Norwegian literature- during a class on Ibsen, facing questions of his role as a transmitter of national self-understanding and identity to the generation of students he is teaching. The lengthy introduction of this theme builds up on growing underlying feelings of futility and inadequacy, and the sense of the irrelevance of his contribution; it culminates in a breakdown event in the school yard. From there on, Rukla walks around Oslo looking backwards at his life events and reflecting upon them, gradually building the sense of having been displaced from the center of events in his own personal life, his cultural time in his country and in the West. His reflections include his contemporaries and their responses to the challenges of a time in which as members of a well-educated but aging minority, they either gradually silenced themselves in presence of the dominant culture or totally abandoned their setting. In the latter case, his Marxist friend and future scholar of Kant, Johan Corneliussen endowed with prodigious vitality and love of life, declines a prestigious fellowship to Heidelberg and escapes to America, where- as a Marxist- he is able to understand Capitalism better than anyone, and to enter subversively into a new cultural role avoiding the insignificance he saw himself doomed to. Corneliussen leaves to Rukla the role of continuing the Norwegian destiny both literally and symbolically. As a character, Rukla is coherent, so is his self-understanding of his "insignificance" which he is able- through his readings in history and literature- to identify as the fate of the individual crushed as he was in the 20th Century by devastating wars and extreme ideologies, even in the small neutral country of Norway. The book keeps us engaged by the intense clarity of the self-reflection and its sense of inevitability.

10 people found this helpful

Helpful

Kindle Customer

Proust or Mann

Reviewed in the United States on August 2, 2018

Verified Purchase

This is heavily and openly influenced by Proust. I wonder about the translation when an occasional word seems to lack precision. Was that the to the translation of original text?
Could this be a character in Proust or Mann the text asks.
If you are open to an inner dialog with stream of consciousness very long breathless paragraphs, by all means read on.

One person found this helpful

Helpful

Hanna

Wow

Reviewed in the United States on April 19, 2019

Verified Purchase

Another amazing book by Solstad. Highly recommended

One person found this helpful

Helpful

Bo K.

A modern Dostoevsky

Reviewed in the United States on December 13, 2020

Verified Purchase

Excellent novel of middle aged malaise in Norway. Firmly in the tradition of modern novels addressing what Rene Girard called mimetic anxiety.

Helpful

Joseph Dorman

Brilliant

Reviewed in the United States on November 10, 2018

Verified Purchase

An utterly brilliant novel by a great writer. Elegant, subtle and ultimately devastating. To read his is to be in the hands of a master.

One person found this helpful

Helpful

salima Bouhafa

Four Stars

Reviewed in the United States on September 24, 2017

Verified Purchase

Very sad story very deep thinking liked the philosophy and anlyticl contend

Helpful

If you liked "Atonement" and "Stoner" you don't want to miss this ...

Reviewed in the United States on January 28, 2016

Verified Purchase

A very well made novel. If you liked "Atonement" and "Stoner" you don't want to miss this one.

4 people found this helpful

Helpful

Top reviews from other countries

A Norwegian Stoner

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on May 4, 2018

Verified Purchase

Meet Elias Rukla, teacher of Norwegian to a bunch of bored teenagers at Fagerborg Secondary School in Oslo. Elias is about to destroy 25 years of hard work and his reputation, publicly and humiliatingly, in front of the whole school. Why is Elias boiling over? Find out in this darkly funny, captivating deep dive into the psyche of a man who comes face to face with his entire existence.

Rewind 25 years. Elias is a somewhat uninspired student of Norwegian at the University of Oslo where he meets the charismatic, larger-than-life character Johan Corneliussen. They become inseparable friends, Johan taking the lead and Elias following loyally behind. Pretty unremarkable himself, Elias is flattered that Johan takes an interest in him. Elias is even invited to be present as Johan courts the stunningly beautiful Eva. But how deep does their friendship really run? Not very, it turns out.

Dag Solstad, described by fellow Norwegian authors Per Petterson and Karl-Ove Knausgaard as Norway’s greatest living author, is known for his many prize-winning novels as well as his extreme left wing political views. I remember reading his impossibly titled Gymnaslærer Pedersens Bereting om den Store Politiske Vekkelsen som har Hjemsøkt Vårt Land (loosely translated as High-school Teacher Pedersen’s Account of the Great Political Awakening that has Haunted our Country) years ago, a very funny satire on the Marxist-Leninist movement in Norway during the 1970s, which Solstad himself was deeply involved in.

Shyness and Dignity is less about politics and more about the life of one shy and lonely man utterly incapable of communicating with those around him despite a deep desire to do so. It’s about betrayal, loss of purpose, feeling irrelevant and unvalued and living an invisible life in the shadow of others.

Now this might not exactly sound like a bundle of fun, but Solstad’s novel is darkly comic and, at times, very funny. Who won’t recognise the feeling of acute embarrassment after exploding with rage in front of a large crowd? Or empathise with Elias’ when his enthusiasm for an Ibsen’s play is met with deafening silence by a group of apathetic teenagers?

I kept thinking of John Williams’ fabulous novel Stoner when I read this book. The two novels have more than quiet English professor protagonists in common. You can add to that suppressed anger, failure of communication, isolation and beautifully drawn-out characters. Shyness and Dignity deserves Stoner’s success.

Bookstoker.com

3 people found this helpful

Amazon Customer

Five Stars

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on September 25, 2017

Verified Purchase

Amazing

JRed

Another great book by Dag Solstad

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on January 8, 2015

Verified Purchase

Another great book by Dag Solstad. The author has a great grasp of what motivates people and a fine sense of how a person can get too attached to a particular period of their life.

One person found this helpful

muriel

getting old

Reviewed in France on November 15, 2019

Verified Purchase

an old teacher out of touch with the new generation he has to teach, looking back at his life which doesn't come to much!
sounds familiar! However there is more to this book than the ranting of an old man. It is also about friendship, betrayal and love. Profound and heart breaking.

MYRNA HACKNEY

An amazing book

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on January 2, 2013

Verified Purchase

Shyness and Dignity by Dag Solstad purchased from Amazan is a book that should be read by anyone interested in the human condition. In the course of one morning everything that one man believes in is stripped away from him, until he is morally naked. Where does he go from there? When you think you know, tell me!

See all reviews

Buying Options

Buy for others

Buying and sending eBooks to others

Follow the Author

Similar authors to follow

Shyness and Dignity Kindle Edition

Customers who bought this item also bought

Customers who viewed this item also viewed

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

From Publishers Weekly

Review

Product details

Customer reviews

Top reviews from the United States

There was a problem filtering reviews right now. Please try again later.

Top reviews from other countries