Martin Andersen Nexø

The Columbia Encyclopedia, Sixth Edition | Date: 2008

Martin Andersen Nexø , 1869-1954, Danish novelist. Born one of 11 children in a Copenhagen slum, he spent his impoverished childhood largely on the island of Bornholm. Both locales appear centrally in his novels. His famous proletarian novels Pelle the Conqueror (4 vol., 1906-10; tr. 1930 and 1989) and Ditte, Daughter of Mankind (5 vol., 1917-21; tr., in 1 vol., 1931) relate the struggles of the poor, focusing attention on conditions of poverty in Denmark; Pelle, a popular motion picture made in the late 1980s, was based on the first part of the novel. Though admittedly a propagandist for communism and social reform, he created a memorable group of tender human portraits. He also wrote about Russia, where he spent many of his later years. The first two volumes of his four-volume autobiography have been translated as Under the Open Sky (1938).

Bibliography: See F. Ingwersen and N. Ingwersen, Quests for a Promised Land (1984).



Author not available, NEXØ, MARTIN ANDERSEN., The Columbia Encyclopedia, Sixth Edition 2008

The Columbia Encyclopedia, Sixth Edition. Copyright 2008 Columbia University Press