Psalm at Journey's End: A Novel

by Erik Fosnes Hansen

Overview

This European bestseller tells of seven members ot the Titanic's European orchestra, unfolding their fascinating life story while painting a fascinating portrait of the intricacies of life on board the supposedly unsinkable ship, from the glamour of first class to the crowded fear of steerage.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781466814486
Publisher:	Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Publication date:	04/16/2025
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	389
File size:	819 KB

About the Author

Erik Fosnes Hansen, born in 1965, is the author of Psalm at Journey's End, which was a number-one bestseller in his native Norway. He lives in Oslo with his family.

Editorial Reviews

Although Hansen takes as his starting point the fatal maiden voyage of the "Titanic" in 1912, he has imagined the lives of the seven musicians who played Handel's "Largo" while the ship foundered and sank. Starting slowly, the novel gradually gathers steam as Hansen reveals how the sorrows of failed personal and professional lives led each of these musicians to a dead-end career entertaining wealthy passengers on ocean voyages. Many readers will have difficulty connecting with this thoughtful yet emotionally cold novel. (The eventual deaths of the musicians seem rather a relief, given the sadness of their lives.) Those readers who persevere will be rewarded with an atmospheric novel laced with unexpected humor and insights into the political and social climate in Europe in the early years of the twentieth century. Comparisons of the Norwegian Hansen with Peter Hoeg, another Scandinavian novelist, are inevitable, but this is no "Smilla's Sense of Snow" (1993). The novel, the author's second, is the first to be published in the U.S.

Nancy Pearl