Brilliant, both as a portrait of academic research and the competition in the field and even more brilliant as a portrait of the tragic man that reassures himself by believing that what he does he does for love of another person.

The main character wants to dedicate the result of the research he has done on the loveletters between two main 16th century´s Norwegian poets (Peter Dass and Dorothea Engelbrektsdatter) as a gift to the woman he is in love with. This conviction gives him the excuse to pursue an extremely interesting line of research with the best intentions in mind, at the same time as he actually steals her idea. She is an intelligent woman, a gifted researcher who does not welcome his form of love, and when he discovers that, she has already left him, by accepting a scholarship to an American Ivy League university.

Byatt´s "Possession" springs to mind, but the likeness is in the setting, not in the problem the characters face. Byatt´s characters are aware of the academic rat-race, the suspense is whether their love for poetry and academy is great enough to let them trust each other. Langeland´s main character believe in his own illusion, he is not aware that he is a cheating, lying, deceiving figure. He does not understand that love is to encourage and give the other one room to do, to excel. He uses the beloved person as an excuse to give himself room to play - and naively ascribe his motivation for what he does, as love. Langeland´s treatment of the selfishness behind such a conviction is far from banal. Meyer comes across, not as an evil, but a tragic figure. A person whose strength of self-illusion makes him so blind that the loss when it comes, is a complete surprise. ( )