Childhood, Youth, Dependency
The Copenhagen Trilogy
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'Utterly, agonisingly compulsive ... a masterpiece' Liz Jensen, Guardian
Following one woman's journey from a troubled girlhood in working-class Copenhagen through her struggle to live on her own terms, The Copenhagen Trilogy is a searingly honest, utterly immersive portrayal of love, friendship, art, ambition and the terrible lure of addiction, from one of Denmark's most celebrated twentieth-century writers.
'Sharp, tough and tender ... wrenching sadness and pitch-black comedy ... Ditlevsen can pivot from hilarity to heartbreak in a trice' Boyd Tonkin Spectator
'Astonishing, honest, entirely revealing and, in the end, devastating. Ditlevsen's trilogy is remarkable not only for its honesty and lyricism; these are books that journey deep into the darkest reaches of human experience and return, fatally wounded, but still eloquent' Observer
'The best books I have read this year. These volumes slip in like a stiletto and do their work once inside. Thrilling' New Statesman
About this Author
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.
Tiina Nunnally is an award-winning translator (from Danish, Norwegian and Swedish) and novelist. She was awarded the prestigious PEN Translation Prize in 2001 for her translation of the third volume of Sigrid Undset's Kristin Lavransdatter, and her translations of Hans Christian Andersen and Tove Ditlevsen for Penguin Classics have been widely praised.
Reviews
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
Mordant, vibrantly confessional... A masterpiece--Guardian
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
Intense, elegant ... Ditlevsen's portrait of Vesterbro in the Twenties has something of the same texture of Elena Ferrante's description of the poor Neapolitan neighbourhood in which her heroines grow up--Lucy Scholes, The Daily Telegraph
Wrenching sadness and pitch-black comedy ... Sharp, tough and tender--Boyd Tonkin, Spectator
A particular kind of masterpiece, one that helps fill a particular kind of void. Ditlevsen's voice, diffident and funny, dead-on about her own mistakes, is a welcome addition to that canon of women who showed us their secret faces so that we might wear our own.--New York Times
Intense and elegant ... an absolute tour de force--Lucy Scholes, Paris Review
A stunning portrait of addiction and ambition . . . unnervingly brilliant. I felt an almost physical pull to reimmerse myself in the freezing cold water of the trilogy, which understands the trauma of childhood and its reverberations like nothing else I have ever read--Vox
Ditlevsen's taut, simple prose shines a light on what life and love were like for working-class women in 20th century Copenhagen. Elena Ferrante fans, take note--Stylist
Despite the darkness that haunts these three books, they shine with Ditlevsen's honesty and humanity ... Her work, seemingly so simple, has the miraculous quality of a life perceived in perfect clarity. Despite the author's untimely death, The Copenhagen Trilogy is a powerful - and uplifting - testament of survival--Erica Wagner
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