Anecdotes of Destiny and Ehrengard

In the classic “Babette’s Feast,” a mysterious Frenchwoman prepares sumptuous feast for a gathering of religious ascetics and, in doing so, introduces them to the true essence of grace. In “The Immortal Story,” a miserly old tea-trader living in Canton wishes for power and finds redemption as he turns an oft-told sailors’ tale into reality for a young man and woman. And in the magnificent novella Ehrengard, Dinesen tells of the powerful yet restrained rapport between a noble Wagnerian beauty and rakish artist.
 
Hauntingly evoked and sensuously realized, the five stories and novella collected here have the hold of "fairy stories read in childhood . . . of dreams . . . and of life as our dreams" (New York Times Book Review).

"[Dinesen's] imagination could visit, it seemed, any corner of European history and find there a tale tinged with the luster and vivid shadowing of medieval allegory." —John Updike

“Stories belonging in that special realm in which artistry is more real than reality.” —Time