Northern Arts

To take issue with Ibsen's creations ... is of course to pay tribute to their vitality, their instructive meaningfulness. The allusion here, provides a perfect example of that remarkable kinship, that constant intellectual exchange, between Scandinavian artists in the last decades of the nineteenth century and the first decade of the twentieth, between those creative spirits of whom later writers and painters from the same provenance felt themselves the heirs. This interconnectedness is integral to Weinstein's ambitious new account of 'the breakthrough of Scandinavian literature and art, from Ibsen to Bergman', though his concern is principally with the congruity of his subjects' preoccupations and artistic choices... [Weinstein's] style can rise to impressive levels of eloquence, and never more so than when he is writing of painting. -- Paul Binding Times Literary Supplement The most ambitious American effort in memory to view Scandinavian culture whole. It unfolds as if the head of our National Book Awards had denounced Scandinavian culture as too hermetic to merit attention in the United States. Almost in reply to such an imagined slight, Weinstein celebrates his subject for projecting a globally influential ethos that transcends any role as merely an occasional producer of world-class artists. -- Carlin Romano Chronicle of Higher Education This weighty, detailed, and authoritative but lively tome elucidates the revolution Scandinavia wrought in the world of arts and letters beginning in the 19th century... Weinstein's is a brilliantly told story of how an underpopulated region developed from repressive backwater to cutting-edge artistic fulcrum. Atlantic This is comparative scholarship at its best. Choice