This is a new translation by W. Glyn Jones of William Heinesen's masterpiece and one of the most important Scandinavian novels of the 20th century.

Music is at the heart of this book. The devotion to it of a group of amateur musicians forming the Boman Quartet prevents a series of dramatic events from turning into heart-rending tragedy. Music enables each of the musicians to rise above his own bleak situation. But there is humour, too, especially in the satirical, larger-than-life portrayal of the local sectarians, led by the bank manager Ankersen, as they seek in vain to break the spirit of the musicians. And humour of a more earthy kind in Janniksen, the huge blacksmith who is completely at the mercy of his petty-minded sectarian wife.