Jérôme 60° latitude nord by Maurice Bedel is a novel written in the early 20th century. It blends romantic comedy with satirical travel writing as a young French dramatist journeys to Norway to stage his play and falls for a forthright Norwegian student, Uni Hansen. Expect a witty clash of ideals and realities—Nordic landscapes and sports, Parisian myths, and theatrical ambitions—filtered through a hero whose imagination outruns the world around him. The
opening of the novel follows Jérôme aboard a steamer from England, where his exuberant imagination turns every sight into legend and where he instantly falls for Uni, a cool, lively astronomy student. In Bergen he’s mobbed by journalists and miscast as a pundit on everything, then on the train to Christiania he finds Uni again and learns her cheerful companion is her brother, Axel. In the capital he becomes a minor celebrity, is whisked by Axel to meet his translator-mother, Clara Krag (a reformist, vegetarian novelist), and the good-humored Minister Krag, then confers with the theatre director about staging his play. A Sunday at Holmenkollen shows the brisk, sportive Norway of his dreams; amid playful skiing and a clumsy compliment that lands awkwardly, Jérôme’s infatuation deepens, even as a boisterous dinner with newspapermen leaves him thinking only of Uni. (This is an automatically generated summary.)
Laurent Vogel and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at www.pgdp.net (This book was produced from images made available by the HathiTrust Digital Library.)
Reading Level
Reading ease score: 82.1 (6th grade). Easy to read.
