Hans Christian Andersen is on his deathbed. Doses of morphine cause his brain to oscillate between dreamy states and fleeting moments of clarity. The complex and elastic mind that drives his personality and his work wrestles with his own perceived fate as a stranger in the world, his longing for love, and his religiosity. To believe in his own talent to the extent that Andersen has done and to have lived so one-dimensionally has left him socially deficient and isolated. There is also torment: although internationally renowned, he was rejected in his own country until late in his life when a leading Danish literary critic discovered