Sigrid Undset: Reader of Hearts

Novelist Sigrid Undset (1882-1949) left a mark on twentieth-century literature, not only in her homeland of Norway, but across the West. Her painterly eye for the Scandinavian countryside, her uncompromising emotional realism, her concrete sense of history, her bold vision of woman and man–these won her such acclaim that she received the 1928 Nobel Prize for Literature, not long after the publication of her epic historical novel, Kristin Lavransdatter.

During World War II, she loudly opposed anti-Semitism and the Nazi regime, and in the final years of her life, the Norwegian state awarded her the Grand Cross of the Order of Saint Olav–the first time this honor was given to a woman outside the royal family. Among her other celebrated works are the novels The Master of Hestviken and Ida Elisabeth, as well as a powerful biography of Catherine of Siena.

But something else set Undset apart. In 1924, she converted to Roman Catholicism, alienating her from Protestants and secular intellectuals alike. This spiritual turn shaped the very heart of her work, as well as her own life as a mother. In a world pockmarked by suffering, disappointment, and cruelty, she discovered that Jesus Christ alone gives meaning to the word love .

Acclaimed theologian and spiritual writer Father Aidan Nichols takes on the figure of Sigrid Undset from a distinctively Christian point of view. Rich in both biography and textual analysis, Sigrid Undset: Reader of Hearts renders a shrewd, colorful account of a writer who allowed her art to be transfigured by the fire of God’s mercy and, thus, to be opened to a beauty beyond all telling.