The Best Intentions

The first novel in world renowned film-maker, Ingmar Bergman’s trilogy of novels plotting the fractious marriage of his parents

In 1909, Ingmar Bergman’s mother and father first meet. Anna is a nurse from a wealthy family; Henrik, a poor, trainee priest living with his lover. From the intensity of their courtship, to the difficult early years of their marriage, Bergman fictionalises his parent’s life before his birth, drawing the quiet, emotional sensitivity of his film-maker’s eye deep into the heart of his own family.

The Best Intentions is the first in renowned film-maker Ingmar Bergman’s loose trilogy of novels that plots the fractious marriage of his parents, continued in Sunday’s Children and Private Confessions.