Imagines the complex personality of Hans Christian Andersen to create a portrait of the writer. This biography deals with the master storyteller's interactions with his friends, benefactors, enemies and others who influenced his life and work, and shows how he transformed his experiences into literature - including his celebrated fairytales.

Hans Christian Andersen is on his deathbed. Doses of morphine cause his brain to oscillate between dreamy states and fleeting moments of clarity. The complex and elastic mind that drives his personality and his work wrestles with his own perceived fate as a stranger in the world, his longing for love, and his religiosity. To believe in his own talent to the extent that Andersen has done and to have lived so one-dimensionally has left him socially deficient and isolated. There is also torment: although internationally renowned, he was rejected in his own country until late in his life when a leading Danish literary critic discovered his fairytales and confirmed their importance to his fellow countrymen. As Andersen's death approaches, his memories grow more vivid and material, yet at the same time fairytale-like. In this remarkable novel, Stig Dalager takes the reader on a journey through the mind, body, spirit, and works of one of the truly great names in world literature.