Synopses & Reviews
Tove Ditlevsen is today celebrated as one of the most important and unique voices in twentieth-century Danish literature, and the Copenhagen Trilogy (1969–71) is her rediscovered masterpiece. Childhood tells the story of a misfit child’s single-minded determination to become a poet; Youth describes her early experiences of sex, work, and independence. In Dependency, the narrator embarks on the first of her four marriages and descends into drug addiction, enabled by her sinister, gaslighting doctor-husband.
Throughout, the narrator grapples with the tension between her vocation as a writer and her competing roles as daughter, wife, mother, and drug addict. Dismissed by the critical establishment in the author’s lifetime, and currently regarded as a literary triumph and spiritual forerunner of today's autofiction, Ditlevsen’s trilogy is remarkable for its intensity and its immersive exploration of female friendships and family life, the struggles of a young woman to be taken seriously as a writer, and the vicious spiral of substance abuse.
Review
“Mordant, vibrantly confessional... A masterpiece.” Liz Jensen, The Guardian
Review
“To get it out of the way: these are the best books I have read this year... Childhood has the simple declarative sentences of Natalia Ginzburg and the pervasive horror of a good fairy story.” John Self, New Statesman
Review
“Semi-miraculous, raw and poignant... Radiates the clear light of truth and stands as the ultimate victory of a life that must have felt, in the living of it, like a defeat.” Alex Preston, Observer
About the Author
Tove Ditlevsen was born in 1917 in a working-class neighborhood in Copenhagen. Her first volume of poetry was published when she was in her early twenties, and was followed by many more books, including her three brilliant volumes of memoir, Childhood (1967), Youth (1967), and Dependency (1971). She married four times and struggled with alcohol and drug abuse throughout her adult life until her death by suicide in 1978.
Tiina Nunnally is an award-winning translator of Danish, Norwegian, and Swedish. Her translation of Kristin Lavransdatter III: The Cross by Sigrid Undset won the PEN/Book-of-the-Month Club Translation Prize in 2001, and her translation of Peter Høeg’s Smilla’s Sense of Snow won the American Translators Association’s Lewis Galantière Award. The Swedish Academy honored Nunnally in 2009 with a special award for her contributions to “the introduction of Swedish culture abroad.” In 2013, she was appointed Knight of the Royal Norwegian Order of Merit. Nunnally is married to Steven T. Murray.
Michael Favala Goldman is a poet, a jazz clarinetist, and a widely published translator of Danish literature. More than one hundred of his translations have appeared in journals such as The Harvard Review and The Columbia Journal. Among his ten translated books are The Water Farm Trilogy, Farming Dreams, and Selected Poems of Benny Andersen. He lives in Florence, Massachusetts.