Released:	August 2005
Publisher:	People's Press
ISBN number:	87-91693-09-8
Cover:	Kenneth Schultz/Casper Sejersen

Notes:

Martin Hall’s long awaited novel 'The Last Romantic' was released on August 25 by the Danish publishing company People’s Press, a monumental piece of work divided into two volumes collectively covering 700 pages. The story begins in the summer of 1980 and ends in the autumn of 2005, a time-span in which the reader follows the escapades and development of the “I”-narrator of the book (being 18 years old in 1980, which makes him one year older than the author himself). It is a story crashing head-on into the myths and the excessive lifestyle of Copenhagen’s bohemian crowd at the times, that being the young poets, musicians and artists of the period. It took Hall five years to finish the book and the novel was at the time without a shadow of doubt his most significant literary achievement – a statement substantiated by the fact that he during the process had received grants from both Kunststyrelsens fagudvalg for litteratur as well as Statens Kunstfonds litteraturråd (divisions of The National Fund for the Endowment of The Arts), the two most prestigious literary institutions in Denmark. The following passage is taken from the publishers’ foreword to the book: “ Throughout human and art history, the romantic struggle is a continuous motif. In the words of Sartre, this is nostalgia for the future - the desire to live life to its fullest, knowing that this will never be realized, and a state of melancholy for the same reason. In Martin Hall’s monumental novel, a gigantic epoch that stretches over 25 years from 1980 to 2005, the storyteller is a young author who matures in the course of the story: From the decadent punk and underground art scenes of the 80’s through the glittering excesses of the 90’s to the level-headedness of the mature man, the question remains; how do you keep your romantic ideals when the world around you doesn’t respond? The Last Romantic is an extravagant tale about the children of the 80’s, the “sons of no generation” as the author himself has described the iconolaters of this age in a song. It is a novel about zeitgeist and daring, about speed freaks and dandys, dealers, rock’n’roll animals and S/M-parties, all written from the perspective of the particular temper of the times – a complete novel about white nights, the search for spirituality, casual sex, delirious love affairs, crass comedy and philosophy, all gathered in the experiences of a generation, who so far hasn’t had their literary testament written. More than anything, The Last Romantic is the great novel’ about becoming a man – at all times. “