The Liar is one of Danish novelist Martin A. Hansen's best known and popular fictions. Published in 1950, the story, which takes place shortly after World War II, is told in the first person and concerns the inhabitants of a tiny island in the Danish archipelago. In this absorbing psychological work, the author probes deeply into the mind of Johannes Vig, the local schoolmaster, a lonely figure whose relationship with his fellow islanders is gradually revealed in the diary on which he retrospectively comments. The story lays bare not only his self-doubts, but his belief in the goodness of man, both of which become increasingly more complex and contradictory as the story unfolds.

The Liar (Sun & Moon Classics)

Literature & Fiction

Hansen, Martin A.

Genre Fiction

Sun & Moon Press

Delicately attuned to the complexities of both the natural world and human psychology, this potent classic of twentieth-century Danish literature is narrated by an isolated schoolteacher stuck in a mire of loneliness, deception, and spiritual despair. One of the greatest works of modern Scandinavian fiction, The Liar tells the story of Johannes Lye, a teacher and parish clerk on tiny Sand Island off the coast of Denmark, a place that in winter is entirely cut off from the world at large by ice. It is winter when the book begins, and for years now Johannes has lived alone, even as he nurses a secret passion for Annemari, a former pupil. Annemari is engaged to a local man, Olaf, who has left the island but is due to return come spring. She is also being courted by a young engineer from the mainland. Such are the chief players in a compact drama, recorded in Johannes's ironic, self-lacerating, and anything but reliable diary. Martin A. Hansen's novel beautifully evokes the stark landscape of Sand Island and the immemorial circuit of the seasons as well as the mysterious passage of time in the human heart, all the while proceeding to a supremely suspenseful conclusion.

The Liar (New York Review Books Classics)

United States

NYRB Classics

Logneren

Gyldendal

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Books by Hansen, Martin A.