Haabløse Slægter
By Herman Bang
Cover: En ældre kvinde med hvid kyse (An Elderly Woman in a White Bonnet), c. 1886 by Vilhelm Hammershøi (1864-1916) · Wikimedia Commons · Public domain
William Høg is the last son of an old noble family worn down by madness and decline. Sensitive and ambitious, he tries to escape what he has inherited through an affair with an older woman and dreams of a career on the stage, but the weight of his family's past keeps pulling him back. Herman Bang's first novel, a scandal in its day, opens with a prologue on the family's history and follows William from boyhood into early manhood. This book uses the racial and other slurs of its period as written; the Book Guide explains these words where they occur.
Summary written with Claude Opus 5.5.