Nothing in Elias' measured life in his whole career as a teacher of literature in his marriage to the 'indescribably beautiful' Eva foreshadowed the events of that apparently ordinary day He makes sure he has his headache pills & leaves for work as he has done every morning for the past twenty-five years He is only too familiar with his pupils' hostile attitude both to his lectures & to himself but today he feels their impatience their oafishness more painfully than ever before & after their ritually dismissive & bored response to his passionate lecture on Ibsen's The Wild Duck he reaches a point of crisis Shyness & Dignity is the story of a man's awakening to a world that no longer recongises what he has always stood for or his talent Dag Solstad is Norway's leading author an icon among Scandinavian writers & a leading figure of the political left This novel in Sverre Lyngstad's fine translation is one of Solstad's major works