Nils is a Swedish boy who gets magically reduced in size and discovers that he can talk to animals, and has a bunch of adventures, some of which are morally improving and some of which are just adventures, mainly with geese though other animals get a look-in too. Lagerlöf, who was an early Nobel Prize winner, clearly loved the countryside and her writing is very sensitive to the rhythms of nature and the rural economy, and also somewhat anti-modernist. I wasn’t completely satisfied with my translation, by Velma Swainston Howard, but I loved the illustrations in my edition by Thea Kliros.
From the Heart of Europe
Books, politics, languages and life
There seems to be a tendency for more popular works to have a lower average rating, and Nod is an extreme example of the trend.
I suppose it’s plausible that more people would rate down a book they read because others were reading it, and more people would rate up a book they discovered for themselves and want to recommend.