The Wonderful Adventure of Nils Holgersson - Hardcover

Lagerl�f, Selma

4.04

11,782 ratings by Goodreads

9780241206089: The Wonderful Adventure of Nils Holgersson

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0241206081 ISBN 13: 9780241206089

Publisher: Penguin Classics, 2016

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Scandinavia's best-loved children's classic - the enchanting story of a naughty little boy who learns to love nature

'Never before had Nils travelled around at such good speed, and he had always liked riding fast and wild. And he had never thought that it could feel as fresh as it did up in the air, and that such a good smell of topsoil and resin rose up from the earth. It was like flying away from worries and sorrows and annoyances of any sort that could be imagined.'

Nils Holgersson is a naughty boy who tortures animals and never listens to his parents - until one day he wakes up as an elf. Deeply puzzled by his new status, he climbs on a gander's back and flies away with him, joining a flock of wild geese. As he is carried around Sweden, Nils learns everything about birds, animals, his country and good behaviour. Incredibly charming, elegantly translated and beautifully designed, The Wonderful Adventure of Nils Holgersson is a timeless classic loved by generations of children around the world.

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Review:

Grand, beautiful, exciting and poignant... This wise, rich text is a welcome addition to Penguin's Classics series (Philip Womack Guardian)

A masterpiece... It showed me that a book could be an adventure (Gary Shteyngart)

A childhood favorite (Philip Gourevitch)

Among women novelists of great talent or genius, none, in my opinion, is to be placed higher than Selma Lagerl�f (Marguerite Yourcenar)

Every book of this great storyteller keeps on bringing us astonishing examples of her art... No one in Europe can tell tales so unforgettably (Hermann Hesse)

I am a strange Japanese who spent his infancy and boyhood under the overwhelming influence of Nils Holgersson. So great was Nils' influence on me that there was a time I could name Sweden's beautiful locales better than those of my own country... The destination of the soul: this is what I, led on by Nils Holgersson, came to seek in the literature of Western Europe (Kenzaburo Oe)

From the Back Cover:

'Never before had Nils travelled around at such good speed, and he had always liked riding fast and wild ... Nor had he thought what it might be like to travel so high above the ground. But it was like flying away from worries and sorrows and annoyances of every imaginable kind'

Nils Holgersson is a naughty boy who pulls the tails of cats and trips up his mother while she is carrying the milk pail. Then one day he discovers he has been magically turned into a tiny imp. He climbs on the back of a gander and takes off with a flock of wild geese as they fly over Sweden, soaring above patchwork fields, through storms, to castles and lakes and even to a city under the sea. As he learns about the world, he also learns what it means to care for living things, in Selma Lagerl�f's timeless and beloved fable.

'The book is grand, beautiful, exciting and poignant ... It is full of poetical phrasing ... yet allows for the naughty spirit of childhood to remain true' Guardian

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