Pelle the Conqueror

Martin Andersen Nexø (1869-1954) was a Danish writer. He was the first author to write about the working class and the first great Danish communist writer. He was born to a large family in a very poor area of Copenhagen, Denmark. After a short career as a worker, he attended a folk high school; later, he worked as a journalist. In the mid-1890s he travelled in Southern Europe, and his book Soldage (1903) is largely based on those travels. Probably his best known and most translated book is Pelle Erobreren (Pelle the Conqueror), the last volume of which was completed in 1910. His other great work was Ditte Menneskebarn (1917-21), a hailing of the working woman and her selfsacrifice as a mother of others. The much debated Midt i en Jærntid, 1929, (i. e. In an Iron Age, eng. transl. In God's Land) satirises the Danish farmers of World War I. During his last years he wrote a (never fulfilled) trilogy (Morten hin Røde, Den fortabte generation, Jeanette 1944-56) which was partly a continuation of Pelle the Conqueror, partly a masked autobiography.