The Conqueror
Is it possible to change a life by telling it?
The story about TV star Jonas Wergeland’s extraordinary career continues. The seducer has now turned conqueror, and his story is told again, from a different angle, filling in holes and making new patterns become visible.
A university professor is commissioned to write the “definitive” Wergeland biography. He has collected extensive background material, but cannot bring himself to start writing. A woman seeks him out and over the course of seven days, she tells the wildly meandering story about Jonas – from his childhood, filled with magical sensuousness, through to an adulthood marked by the eroticist’s tragic insights.
The Conqueror is the second book in the trilogy about Jonas Wergeland.
Jan Kjærstad
Jan Kjærstad occupies a prominent place in contemporary Norwegian literature. He has a master‘s degree in theology from the University of Oslo, and he made his debut as a writer of fiction in 1980 with Kloden dreier stille rundt, a collection of short stories. He has written a number of novels and short stories and he has published picture books and essays. In 1984 he received the Norwegian Literary Critics Association’s Prize for Homo Falsus, or the Perfect Murder. The fact that he was honored with Germany’s prestigious Henrik Steffens Prize in 1998, awarded to Scandinavians who have significantly enriched Europe’s artistic and intellectual life, also illustrates his international appeal as an author. His trilogy The Seducer (1993), The Conquerer (1996) and The Inventer (1999) makes a monumental contribution towards renewal of the art of novel writing in Scandinavia.
