Undset, Sigrid

Inspired by the dire, fatalistic mores of the Norse sagas and Undset’s own devout Catholicism, her towering achievement is made less forbidding in Nunnally’s welcome new translation, which is very much in keeping with the novelist’s project of deromanticizing the past, resulting in a vivid, painstakingly researched historic re-creation, less akin to the lush swashbuckling of Dumas or Scott than to the harsh, immersive naturalism of Zola.