The first woman to receive the Nobel Prize for literature, Lagerlöf assured her place in Swedish letters with this 1891 novel. The eponymous hero, a country pastor whose appetite for alcohol and indiscretions ends his career, falls in with a dozen vagrant Swedish cavaliers and enters into a power struggle with the richest woman in the province.

The book has a Faustian theme revolving around a possible deal with the Devil. It also deals with social issues such as poverty and depression, as well as mixing in elements of myths and humorous love stories.