Lars Hertervig is a provincial young Norwegian from a poor Quaker background, studying art in Germany and prone to crippling insecurities, sexual obsessions, and terrifying hallucinations. In prose as hypnotic as Beckett's or Bernhard's - but earthier, and funnier - the novel describes a single day of crisis and its repercussions, years later for Lars himself and a century later for a writer inspired by Hertervig's vision. Melancholy takes us deep inside a painter's fragile consciousness, vulnerable to everything but therefore uniquely able to see its beauty and its light.