Bang: A Novel About the Danish Writer

January 29th, 1912. On a train in Ogden, Utah, a Danish author was found dead. The 54-year-old Herman Bang was en route from New York to San Francisco as part of a reading tour. Having fled his birthplace on the island of Als ahead of the Prussian advance of 1864, he was later hounded out of Copenhagen, Berlin, Vienna, and Prague by homophobic laws and hostility to his uncompromising social critique as journalist, novelist, actor and dramaturge. Dorrit Willumsen re-works Bang's life story in a series of compelling flashbacks that unfold during his last fateful train ride across the USA. A pioneering journalist, author, and dramatist, Herman Bang (1857-1912) was a key figure in Scandinavia's Modern Breakthrough. His major works include Haablose Slaegter (Hopeless Generations, 1880), Stuk (Stucco, 1887) and Tine (Tina, 1889). Dorrit Willumsen's Bang was awarded the Nordic Council Literature Prize, 1997