Recommendations
Books Like Kristin Lavransdatter
Best books to read after Kristin Lavransdatter by Sigrid Undset
Kristin Lavransdatter is the great Norwegian historical novel and one of the supreme achievements of twentieth-century fiction — a three-volume portrait of a woman's entire life in medieval Norway. If the trilogy's sweep and its portrait of a woman navigating love, duty, faith, and self-determination moved you, these books share its concern with women's experience across a complete life, its interest in the relationship between spiritual life and earthly love, and its conviction that the most serious fiction about women must take the full complexity of their choices seriously.
- 1Buy
The Master of Hestviken
by Sigrid Undset
Undset's second medieval Norwegian tetralogy — set in the same world as Kristin Lavransdatter but organized around a male protagonist, Olav Audunssøn; less celebrated than Kristin Lavransdatter but equally serious in its historical research and psychological depth; essential for readers who love the trilogy and want more Undset
- 2Buy
Middlemarch
by George Eliot
The essential English companion — Dorothea Brooke's life in provincial England and the question of what a woman of exceptional ability does when the available outlets for her gifts are inadequate; Eliot and Undset are the two supreme novelists of women's full lives, and reading Kristin Lavransdatter and Middlemarch together gives the range of what the novel about women's experience can achieve
- 3Buy
The Pillars of the Earth
by Ken Follett
Follett's medieval historical novel — the building of a cathedral in twelfth-century England; a more narrative-driven and accessible medieval historical fiction than Kristin Lavransdatter, and the most popular; the comparison shows the difference between popular historical fiction and serious literary historical fiction organized around psychological depth
- 4Buy
Anna Karenina
by Leo Tolstoy
Tolstoy's novel about a woman who leaves her husband for a lover — the essential parallel to Kristin Lavransdatter in the tradition of the nineteenth-century novel about women, desire, and social constraint; where Undset's Kristin lives in a medieval Catholic world that offers her the consolation of genuine religious faith, Tolstoy's Anna lives in a modern secular world that offers her no consolation for the desire that destroys her
- 5Buy
The Name of the Rose
by Umberto Eco
Eco's medieval mystery novel — the most celebrated literary work set in the same medieval Catholic world that Kristin Lavransdatter inhabits; where Undset approaches the medieval world through the inner life of a woman, Eco approaches it through the intellectual life of a monk; together they give the range of what serious literary fiction can do with the medieval setting
- 6Buy
Out of Africa
by Isak Dinesen
The Scandinavian companion organized around a woman's relationship to a landscape — Dinesen's seventeen years in Kenya; where Undset gives Kristin a complete life of extraordinary depth, Dinesen gives the reader seventeen years of another kind of life; both are organized around a woman who belongs completely to a world that the reader understands will be taken from her
- 7Buy
The Bronze Horseman
by Paullina Simons
Simons's epic love story set during the Siege of Leningrad — the most popular recent parallel to Kristin Lavransdatter in the tradition of the sweeping historical romance that takes its characters' emotional and physical suffering seriously; where Undset's historical fiction is organized around medieval faith and duty, Simons's is organized around Soviet-era survival and romantic love
- 8Buy
Pillars of the Earth
by Ken Follett
Follett's cathedral-building medieval saga — the most widely read parallel in the popular historical fiction tradition to Kristin Lavransdatter; where Undset's medieval world is organized around spiritual depth and psychological precision, Follett's is organized around narrative drive and historical detail; useful for readers who want to understand the range of what medieval historical fiction can be
More Kristin Lavransdatter Resources
More Reading Recommendations
View all →Monthly Newsletter
Never miss a big release
Get the most anticipated upcoming books delivered to your inbox once a month — no spam, no filler.
Monthly only. Unsubscribe anytime.
Book links are Amazon affiliate links. As an Amazon Associate, BookReleaseRadar earns from qualifying purchases at no extra cost to you.