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Imprint: Penguin Classics
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Published: 05/09/2019
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ISBN: 9780241405550
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Length: 128 Pages
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Dimensions: 216mm x 9mm x 135mm
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Weight: 135g
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RRP: £9.99
'Utterly, agonisingly compulsive ... a masterpiece' Liz Jensen, Guardian
The second volume in The Copenhagen Trilogy, the searing portrait of a woman's journey through love, friendship, ambition and addiction, from one of Denmark's most celebrated twentieth-century writers
Forced to leave school early, Tove embarks on a chequered career in a string of low-paid, menial jobs. But she is hungry: for poetry, for love, for real life to begin. As Europe slides into war, she must navigate exploitative bosses, a Nazi landlady and unwelcome sexual encounters on the road to hard-won independence. Yet she remains ruthlessly determined in the pursuit of her poetic vocation - until at last the miracle she has always dreamed of appears to be within reach.
Youth, the second volume in The Copenhagen Trilogy, is a strikingly honest and immersive portrait of adolescence, filled with biting humour, vulnerability and poeticism.
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Imprint: Penguin Classics
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Published: 05/09/2019
-
ISBN: 9780241405550
-
Length: 128 Pages
-
Dimensions: 216mm x 9mm x 135mm
-
Weight: 135g
-
RRP: £9.99
Reviews
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The best books I have read this year ... They act as a manifesto for art, showing that literature is not the base metal: it is the process of alchemy, and the gold that results
John Self, New Statesman
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Mordant, vibrantly confessional... A masterpiece
Guardian
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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
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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
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Wrenching sadness and pitch-black comedy ... Sharp, tough and tender
Boyd Tonkin, Spectator
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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
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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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Incredibly compelling and timely
Amber Butchard, The Saturday Review
