The curse on the Lowenskold family comes to fruition in unexpected ways in this final volume of the Lowenskold cycle. Anna Svard is also very much a novel of women's struggle toward finding fulfillment. The Lowenskold Ring resonates with 'beggars cannot be choosers' in relation to what a poor woman can expect in life, while Charlotte Lowenskold moves toward women having some choices. In Anna Svard the eponymous protagonist takes full and impressive control of her own life and destiny. The question of motherhood and the fates of the children with whom the characters engage is another theme....

What happens to an individual who is rejected by society? What happens to a society that eventually realises the living are more important than the dead, and that it is suffering a crisis of values and priorities? What does war do to us and to our outlook on the world? Selma Lagerloef struggled with these issues throughout World War I and experienced a mental block in writing about them. Then she found an opening and produced a thought-provoking tale of love, death and survival that grapples with moral dilemmas as relevant today as they were a century ago. Selma Lagerloef (1858-1940)...