SOURCE: "Social Criticism" and "Politics and an Author," in Johan Bojer: The Man and His Works, translated by Elizabeth Jelliffe MacIntire, Moffat, Yard and Company, 1920, pp. 43-64, 65-88.

In the following excerpt, Gad explores Bojer's disdain for political corruption as represented in his works.

Social Criticism

The first of Johan Bojer's books that assumes a likeness of lasting worth is the novel Et Folketog (1 896). This book is a sign manual of his right to be ranked as author, and together with his two succeeding novels, Den Evige Krig (1899) and Moder Lea (1900) it makes up, in a natural sequence the first group of his writings—novels of social criticism. All three are concerned with the antagonism of politics to labor.

Et Folketog—an amazingly mature and assured piece of work for a writer of but twenty-four years of age—pictures the political struggle in a Vestland parish, and analyses...