Tove Ditlevsen, Michael Favala Goldman (Translator), Stine Wintlev (Read by)

The Trouble with Happiness

and Other Stories

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Summary

Brought to you by Penguin.

A newly married woman longs, irrationally, for a silk umbrella; a husband chases away his wife's beloved cat; a betrayed mother impulsively sacks her housekeeper. Underneath the surface of these precisely observed tales of love, marriage and family life in mid-century Copenhagen pulse currents of desire, violence and despair, as women and men dream of escaping their conventional roles and finding freedom and happiness - without ever truly understanding what that might mean.

© Tove Ditlevsen 2022 (P) Penguin Audio 2022

Reviews

Ditlevsen's writing is crystal clear and vividly, painfully raw
The Paris Review

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.

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