<div><div><b>An Ibsen scholar falls desperately out of society<b>—publication coinciding with Ibsen's 100th anniversary celebrations</b></b></div><div><i></i> </div><div><i>In front of him, twenty-nine young men and women about the age of eighteen who looked at him and returned his greeting. He asked them to take out their school edition of </i>The Wild Duck<i>. He was once more struck by their hostile attitude toward him. But it couldn't be helped, he had a task to perform and was going through with it. It was from them as a group that he sensed that massive dislike sent forth by their bodies. Individually they could be very pleasant, but together, positioned like now, at their desks, they constituted a structural enmity, directed at him and all that he stood for.</i></div><b><i><div><br></b></i>Elias Rukla begins yet another day under the leaden Oslo sky. At the high school where he teaches, a novel insight into Ibsen's <i>The Wild Duck </i>grips him with a passion so intense that he barely notices the disinterest of his students. After the lesson, when a broken umbrella provokes an unpredictable rage, he barely notices<br>the students' intense curiosity. He soon realizes, however, that this day will be the decisive day of his life. </div><div> </div><div>Dag Solstad, praised in Norway as one of the most innovative novelists of his generation, offers an intricate and richly drawn portrait of a man who feels irrevocably alienated from contemporary culture, politics, and, ultimately, humanity.</div></div>