Anna Sward

Anna Sward, a hardy pedlar girl from Dalarna, marries the young clergymanCarl Arthur Ekenstedt believing she has at last escaped the poverty shehas tramped the roads to outrun. Instead she finds him installed in themeanest cottage in the parish, his high-minded sermons faltering on histongue — and Thea Sundler, the jealous, deceptively meek organist's wife,already waiting at the door. The marriage curdles; Carl Arthur and Theatake to the roads as wandering market-preachers, ever more savage anddespised. At Hedeby, meanwhile, Baron Adrian Lowenskiold longs in vainfor a son, until his lost brother George — the Vagabond Baron of locallegend — comes home in a snowstorm with a child to give away. The oldcurse laid upon the Lowenskiolds is moving towards its last hour.

Set in 1830s Värmland and Dalarna, this is the third and final part ofSelma Lagerlöf's Lowenskiold trilogy, first published in 1928. Lagerlöf— the first woman to win the Nobel Prize in Literature (1909) — bringsher great chronicle of pride, piety and providence to its close, in astory that sweeps from kitchen quarrels and market-square farce to thebreaking of ice on a winter lake. This translation renders her voice —intimate, ironic, and unerring — in modern English.