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FROM THE PUBLISHER - A man of thirty-four sits down to tell you why, seventeen years ago, as a mere boy living in Misery Harbor, Newfoundland, after years of violence and poverty suffered during his bitter struggles as a runaway from his home in a Danish town, as a sailor and a lumberjack - why in that crucial year of his life he killed a man. He has now settled down, married, and became the father of a family. He has, so to speak, digested his murder. He wants only to explain how it came about - and what forces in his own character, as well as in the life he has lived, led him to that act - and how he has felt about it since. That is the book: a man's outpourings of all his thoughts and emotions, all his subconscious, his passions, his secrets, his vices, his noblest ideals, his lowest cravings. Why must he do all this? Because he wants to understand himself. He remembers well that at that time he thought he was committing the murder because the man took away his girl, but he knows now that it was not the real reason. There were many reasons, subtler and profounder than the ostensible one. He must get at those hidden reasons. He must understand himself if he is to find spiritual peace. This man of thirty-four is talking to you. Can you refuse to listen? Forget that this is a book. Think of it as reality. It is reality. It is the truth. He sits before you and talks. He is a little drunk, because alcohol, he has found, is the one thing that will give him a clear inner vision. The tale wanders, digresses, comes back again to its central core, goes off to religion, sex, politics, crime, returns once more to the main thread - in short, the story-teller behaves exactly as he would if he were speaking instead of writing. Certainly you listen; you cannot and do not want to leave him. The tale appalls you, horrifies you, but also inspires and fascinates you - for in the effort to understand himself, he helps you to understand yourself - and human beings everywhere and at all times. He is the universal man distorted, the eternal subconscious made abnormally conscious, the seemingly incredible, impossible distillation of all modern life. Wild indeed is this story - but always true. His adventures in his home town, on the sea, in the foc's'les of many ships, among the dregs of many harbors, and in the forest of Canada, imply enough action and drama for a shelf of novels, but the emphasis is invariably psychological. It is not for nothing that a Swedish critic compared Sandemose with James Joyce and D.H. Lawrence and said that he goes far beyond them both. Another critic said of one chapter in this book that it brings to mind Knut Hamsun's HUNGER, although Sandemose is ruthlessly realistic where Hamsun was romantic. So deep and merciless are the author's probing into the human soul that this book impelled another to call him 'a madman suffering from an excess of sanity.' Whatever he may be, his story is something you will long remember.

Check zenosbooks.com for a copy of this book

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