One of the greatest works of modern Scandinavian fiction, The Liar tells the story of Johannes Lye, a teacher and parish clerk on tiny Sand Island off the coast of Denmark, a place that in winter is entirely cut off from the world at large by ice. It is winter when the book begins, and for years now Johannes has lived alone, even as he nurses a secret passion for Annemari, a former pupil. Annemari is engaged to a local man, Olaf, who has left the island but is due to return come spring. She is also being courted by a young engineer from the mainland. Such are the chief players in a compact drama, recorded in Johannes's ironic, self-lacerating, and anything but reliable diary.
Martin A. Hansen's novel beautifully evokes the stark landscape of Sand Island and the immemorial circuit of the seasons as well as the mysterious passage of time in the human heart, all the while proceeding to a supremely suspenseful conclusion.
Paul Larkin worked for five years in the Danish Merchant Navy before taking a degree in Scandinavian and Celtic Studies. He later trained as a film director with the BBC. He had a long career in journalism and filmmaking before returning to Scandinavian languages and fiction as a translator, critic, and author.
Morten Høi Jensen is a writer and critic from Copenhagen, Denmark. He is the author of A Difficult Death: The Life and Work of Jens Peter Jacobsen. His writing has appeared in The New York Review of Books, the Los Angeles Review of Books, The Point, The New Republic, The Wall Street Journal, Commonweal, and The American Interest.
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In case you missed it the other week—a recording of the event on Martin A. Hansen's The Liar with translator Paul Larkin (@brehonisbest) and @MortenHoiJensen, hosted by @ScanHouse. https://t.co/NelLE2o1s5 We love this book.
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Join us tomorrow, Tuesday, April 11 for a book talk with Paul Larkin and Morten Høi Jensen on Martin A. Hansen’s THE LIAR, one of the greatest works of modern Scandinavian fiction, out from @nyrbclassics! https://t.co/QTh87gVe0C
"[The Liar] is a book that will lead readers to marvel at how intricate storytelling and human life can be, and how subtly their intricacies can be linked." --Poul Houe, Rain Taxi Review
"Paul Larkin beautifully renders Johannes's epiphanic final diary entries: 'On any map [Sandø] is tiny, but for any inhabitant her mass is huge ... The island has immeasurable chapters of time in her. Vanished times and times that are yet to come.'" --Paul Binding, Times Literary Supplement
"A great work of art. . . . There is a palpable unease in every sentence." --Tom Kristensen
"There is a sense of measured urgency in [The Liar], which carries you along as you read, and makes you unwilling to put the book down before you have finished, before you have learned whether Johannes sees his first woodcock of the season and achieves his love's desire, and which of her two loves Annemari finally chooses--before you learn, in fact, the final direction of all these vivid lives which inform and make absorbing each page of the book." --The Sydney Morning Herald