Jenny

A devastatingly beautiful 20th-century novel about an aspiring female artist's search and struggle for autonomy, from Nobel Prize-winning author Sigrid Undset.

"Wonderfully alive... Undset's masterly depiction of Jenny's evolving emotions makes one realize that one is in the presence of an acute observer." -The New York Times

Jenny Winge, a young Norwegian artist, lives abroad in Rome at the turn of the 20th century, socialising with fellow bohemian expats and aspiring to a life of passionate creative work and personal integrity. When Helge Gram, another Norwegian seeking freedom from the austere Protestant atmosphere at home, arrives in Rome and enters her circle, she finds herself succumbing to a desire for affection and companionship that leads her to compromise her ideals.

The pair become engaged and return to Norway, where Jenny must join Helge living with his parents in their stiflingly conservative and claustrophobic household. One failed relationship leads to another and soon Jenny is pregnant out of wedlock, facing a life very different from her dreams. Yet she continues to pursue a life of art, against the odds.

Marked by lush painterly descriptions and unflinching honesty in matters of the heart, Jenny is the first major novel of Nobel Prize-winning Norwegian author Sigrid Undset, best known for her famous historical Kristin Lavransdatter trilogy. Unsparing, yet glowing with compassion, this exquisite and devastating account of one woman's struggle for emancipation feels as fresh today as when it was first written.