• ISBN: 978 0 7206 1269 1
• Fiction
• Paperback
• 320pp
• £13.50
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Journey in Blue

A novel about Hans Christian Andersen

Stig Dalager

Journey in Blue is an acclaimed fictional recreation of the life and works of the fairy-tale writer Hans Christian Andersen by a rising star of contemporary Danish literature.

Hans Christian Andersen is on his deathbed. Doses of morphine cause his brain to oscillate between dreamy states and fleeting moments of clarity. The complex and elastic mind that drives his personality and his work wrestles with his own perceived fate as stranger in the world, his longing for love and his religiosity.

To believe in his own talent to the extent that Andersen has done and to have lived so one-dimensionally has left him socially deficient and isolated. There is also torment: although internationally renowned, he was rejected in his own country until late in his life when a leading Danish literary critic discovered his fairytales, and confirmed their importance to his fellow countrymen. As Andersen’s death approaches, his memories grow more vivid and material, yet at the same time fairytale-like. In this remarkable novel, Stig Dalager takes the reader on a journey through the mind, body, spirit and works of one of the truly great names in world literature.

‘"It is from Denmark that all the cold blasts come that turn me to stone!
They spit on me, trample me in the dust!" These words, from a letter Hans Christian Andersen wrote to his friend Jette Wulff, are integral to the portrait of the great writer that Stig Dalager attempts in this novel. At the time, Andersen was in Paris hobnobbing with Hugo, Lamartine, Heine; all treated him as a genius. Balzac granted an audience and showered him with compliments. Meanwhile, in Denmark, journalists were ridiculing him, mocking his vanity on and off the page, sneering at his social ascent . . . What gives Dalager's novel its real distinction is its picture of a lifelong apartness, with acceptance and love as unrealisable goals. The situation of the old man is foreshadowed many times in the life. Andersen never ceased to be, and to feel, the vulnerable outsider, and Dalager's accounts of his compulsive travelling have power. As Auden said about another great traveller and giver of delight, Edward Lear: through his wanderings the writer himself "became a land".’ – Paul Binding, Independent

'A stunning novel' – Ian McMillan BBC Radio 3

'Stig Dalager’s fictional biography of Hans Christian Andersen finds the writer at the end of his life, recollecting his past in impressionistic, morphine-influenced episodes. Of the many books published in Andersen’s bicentenary this one comes nearest to explaining to non-Danes the troubled reverence in which the master storyteller is held by his compatriots.' – London Review of Books

'Dalager's empathy with his subject is fervent and he is a skilled writer, having accrued a distinguished reputation in Europe with five novels and a number of plays. Journey In Blue has a febrile glow of authenticity: its Andersen is real…offers a valuable insight into a stunted genius. ' - Michel Faber , Guardian

‘Stig Dalager makes Andersen live again, he makes his genius understable in human terms. Stig Dalager’s novel about the famous writer of fairy tales is great art about a great artist.’
– Jyllandsposten (Denmark)

‘From over a dozen books about H.C. Andersen, two are truly remarkable: H.C. Andersen’s own novel Only a Fiddler and Stig Dalager’s Journey in Blue.’ – Berliner Tagesspiegel (Germany)‘

he big achievement of Journey in Blue is to create a new stylistic basis for the telling of the Andersen story, which makes the journey with the poet such a convincing experience.’
– Ekstra Bladet (Denmark)

‘ A brilliant novel . . . A sensual and intellectual pleasure as well." – Lesart (Germany)