Description

By (author) Ditlevsen Tove; Translated by Goldman, Michael Favala

”So clear is Ditlevsen”s eye that it is impossible to tear yourself away” John Self, Guardian

An unforgettable collection of stories from the author of
The Copenhagen Trilogy

”The most important thing is probably always precisely the thing you can”t have. That”s where all the happiness is”

In these brief, acid-sharp stories of love, marriage and family from one of Denmark”s most celebrated writers, the ordinary events of everyday life – a wife anxious not to wake her husband, a little boy losing his father”s beloved knife, a woman”s obsessive longing for a yellow silk umbrella – become dark and disconcerting. Here Tove Ditlevsen explores yearning, fear and the elusiveness of that strange thing called happiness.

”The purity and dazzling insight of Ditlevsen”s writing speaks for itself” Daily Telegraph

”Authentic, unforced and utterly lucid” Sunday Times

”Ditlevsen”s wonderful and devastatingly bleak short stories simmer with melancholy and despair” Daily Mail

Translated by Michael Favala Goldman

Review quote:

Splendid short stories… the purity and dazzling insight of Ditlevsen”s writing speaks for itself

Review quote:

An intense reading experience… so clear is Ditlevsen”s eye that it”s impossible to tear yourself away from the fates of her characters, however grim

Review quote:

These short stories show off her astonishingly precise prose

Review quote:

A bracingly bleak selection of stories by the celebrated Danish writer Tove Ditlevsen…
These are perfectly judged pieces: authentic, unforced and utterly lucid

Review quote:
Ditlevsen”s
wonderful and devastatingly bleak short stories simmer with melancholy and despair … Her prose is clear and spare, pared back to the essential task of describing the struggle for an unwon freedom from domestic despair and unsatisfactory marriages

Review quote:

The depths of desire and despair are Ditlevsen”s subjects and illuminating them is her talent

Review quote:
Ditlevsen”s writing is crystal clear and vividly, painfully raw

Review quote:
A terrifying talent

Review quote:
Her writing is incredible, so focused and clear. Not a word that doesn”t need to be there

Biographical note:
Tove Ditlevsen was born in 1917 in a working-class neighbourhood in Copenhagen. Her first volume of poetry was published when she was in her early twenties, and was followed by many more books, including the novels The Faces and Vilhelm”s Room and her autobiographical masterpiece, Childhood (1967), Youth (1967) and Dependency (1971). She married four times and died by suicide in 1976.