Editions

Childhood, Youth, Dependency

  • Imprint: Penguin Classics

  • ISBN: 9780241457573

  • Length: 384  Pages

  • Dimensions: 198mm x 21mm x 129mm

  • Weight: 281g

  • RRP: £9.99

Childhood, Youth, Dependency

'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

  • Imprint: Penguin Classics

  • ISBN: 9780241457573

  • Length: 384  Pages

  • Dimensions: 198mm x 21mm x 129mm

  • Weight: 281g

  • RRP: £9.99

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

  • 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

  • As in much of the best autofiction, the protagonist's weakness is counterpoised by the strength of her voice ... [Ditlevsen speaks] beyond the cruel and disappointing figures she encounters to us, her readers, awaiting her in another time and another place

    Lara Feigel, Guardian

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About the Author

Tove Ditlevsen

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 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.

Tove Ditlevsen

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Features

Tove Ditlevsen: Why it's time to discover Denmark's most famous literary outsider

‘The Billie Holliday of poetry’ was ignored by the male establishment, but her pioneering autofiction is finally being recognised around the world

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