Set in the Faroese town of Torshavn at the beginning of the 20th century, this is the story of a group of musicians - the Boman Quartet - who find sanctuary in their music amid a series of dramatic and tragic events.

First published in 1964 The Good Hope won The Nordic Prize for Literature. It is the first English translation of one of the greatest novels in the Danish language..The Good Hope is an epistolary novel based on the life of the Reverend Lucas Debes, a larger than life character called Peder B rresen in the novel. It tells a story of brutal oppression, poverty and terrible diseases, but also of resistance and of having the courage of one's convictions. It is a dramatic fantasy in which Heinesen's customary themes - the struggle against evil, sectarianism, superstition and oppression -emerge on a higher plane, set against the backcloth of the Faroe Islands in the 1690s.The Good Hope is a masterpiece which took 40 years to write.

Glyn Joness translation captures the enthusiasm, charm and humour of a great writers first novel. Windswept Dawn is a Faeroese Under the Milk Wood revealing the whole personality of a small closely knit community. William Heinesen brings to life a whole host of vivid, larger than life character from the sectarian preacher, Reinhold Vaag, the drunken, philosophising solicitor Morberg, the well-meaning voyeur Vitus, to the firebrand shopkeeper Landrus and the bizarre teacher Balduin who is intent on reaching spiritual perfection. We see the large cast of characters battling against the elements, the hostile sea and the rough terrain while the Lutherans and the Plymouth Brethren fight for their souls in a changing world. The main character in the novel is the Faroes Island themselves. William Heinesen is generally considered to be one of the greatest if not the greatest Scandinavian novelist of the twentieth century.

Heinesen's novels always contain the portrait of what might be termed a "good" woman: Simona in Windswept Dawn, Eliana in The Lost Musicians, Liva in The Black Cauldron. Here, however, the "good" woman, Antonia, is raised to mythological status as the representative of motherhood, the bearer of life as has existed from the dawn of time. This portrayal is placed against the description of a limited circle of ordinary and unprepossessing figures in a small town, much of it as experienced through the eyes of Antonia's infant illegitimate son from his very earliest days until he is some five years of age.In contrast to Antonia, there is Trine, an essentially tragic figure, whose tragedy to a large extent is the direct result of her narrow religious beliefs and her resultant refusal to follow her natural instincts and to take the chance of happiness and the natural fulfilment of life when it is offered to her. Religion is in this novel portrayed exclusively in negative terms in stark contrast to the world of nature, the bearer of life, the supreme representative of which is Antonia.