Winner of the Critics’ Prize 1950

The Magic Glass gave Torborg Nedreaas a major artistic breakthrough and was rewarded with the Critics’ Prize when it was published in 1950. While it was originally categorized as a short story collection on the author’s wishes, The Magic Glass has an epic unity. It follows a large cast of characters in Bergen in the years around the outbreak of World War I, where storylines intersect and are continued across chapters, often from different perspectives.

At the center of the book, though, is the little red-haired and unruly Herdis, a “difficult” child with an emerging artistic temperament. ‘The magic glass’ is a prism Herdis possesses – she loves it because it makes her surroundings shine with a unique brilliance.

However, what Nedreaas unfolds for the readers is far from a glossy image. The Magic Glass is filled with stark reality, portraying children’s loneliness and helplessness, but also the secret imaginative wealth that even the poorest can possess. Here, the world is experienced through the alert eyes of children, while Nedreaas also shows how children are influenced by the society surrounding them, including marital conflicts, poverty, class differences, and war.

The story of Herdis is continued in Music from a Blue Well (1960) and By the Next New Moon (1971). The trilogy ranks among the finest coming-of-age stories in Norwegian literature.