By Sigrid Undset

The Longest Years is a vivid rendering of childhood memories into an autobiographical novel. Through the young Norwegian girl Ingvild, Sigrid Undset conveys the veritable cornucopia of original experiences in the life of a child: the sights, sounds, and smells; the beginnings of thought and the acute pangs of suffering; and the pure privilege of innocence. Avoiding altogether any attempt to modify, let alone interpret, the memories of Ingvild, Undset sets forth the organic sprawling verity of a child’s world and its rootedness in what Hopkins called the “dearest freshness deep down things.”

How did it come about that in later years the time they were living in Lydersagen always appeared to her as her real childhood? Those years occupied such a space in her memory that they seemed longer than all the time before and after put together.… 

First published in 1935, The Longest Years was hailed by critics as “forthright and untinted,” honest and real,” “perhaps the finest thing Undset has written since the inimitable Kristin Lavransdatter.” Down to the present day, the novel remains undiminished in power as an occasion to see the world with the clear-eyed vision of a child.

Sigrid Undset (1882–1949) was a Norwegian novelist and essayist and a convert to the Catholic faith. In 1928, she was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature. A number of Undset’s books are available from Cluny, including the Kristin Lavransdatter trilogy, the Master of Hestviken tetralogy, and Saga of Saints.

Paperback: 314pp.

ISBN: 978-1950970858