Dutch · Intermediate
Read De groote betoovering in Dutchwith every sentence explained
English title: The General's Ring
Selma Lagerlöf · 1925
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About the book
De groote betoovering by Selma Lagerlöf was first published in 1925. In Passage you read the full text in the Dutch translation by Margaretha Meijboom, marked intermediate and filed under historical fiction and horror. It runs to about 31,700 words.
A king's gold ring, buried with a dead general. One night the grave stands open. And the general wants it back.
Värmland, Sweden, 1741. General Bengt Löwensköld, a peasant's son who rose to glory under King Charles XII, is laid to rest in the family vault at Bro with the king's heavy signet ring still on his finger. In a land where few have ever seen gold, nobody can forget it.
When the vault is opened months later for a child's funeral and left unsealed, the simple, honest farmer Baard Baardson cannot stop thinking about that ring. Soon after, the ring is gone. Then misfortune strikes: his farm burns, his cattle die, his family falls into ruin — and his young daughter speaks of “strong Bengt”, who gives them no peace.
Written by Selma Lagerlöf, the first woman to win the Nobel Prize in Literature, The General's Ring (1925) is a chilling, warm-hearted ghost story and the first book of her Löwensköld trilogy, here in its classic authorised Dutch translation.
- Author
- Selma Lagerlöf
- First published
- 1925
- Language
- Dutch
- Translated by
- Margaretha Meijboom
- Level
- Intermediate
- Genre
- Historical Fiction, Horror
- Length
- About 31,700 words
How it opens
Ik weet wel, dat er vroeger heel wat menschen waren, die niet wisten wat bang-zijn was. Ik heb van veel menschen gehoord, die graag over één nacht ijs liepen, en die geen grooter genoegen kenden, dan met paarden te rijden die den kolder hebben. Ja, zelfs waren er, die niet vermeden kaart te spelen met Jonker Ahlegaard, hoewel men ontdekt had, dat hij er allerlei kunsten met de kaarten op na hield, zoodat hij altijd won. Ik ken ook enkele onverschrokken knapen, die er niet bang voor zijn een reis op Vrijdag te aanvaarden, of aan te zitten aan een tafel voor dertien personen gedekt.
Reading De groote betoovering in Passage
Passage sets the book as a quiet, paginated reader in Dutch. Read at your own pace, and when a sentence stops you, tap it. You get:
- a natural translation of that exact sentence,
- a short note on the grammar, in plain words,
- the key words, which you can save with the sentence they came from,
- all of it in English, Spanish, French, German, Italian, Turkish or Portuguese, whichever you read best.
It's marked intermediate: comfortable once everyday Dutch feels familiar, with the harder sentences one tap away. The words you save come back later in short review games, so the book keeps teaching after you close it.
