Kirjahaku

“Jeg skylder både læserne og mig selv at skrive denne bog så „ordentligt“ som det er mig muligt. Det betyder, at den må inddeles i overskuelige afsnit, skønt livet selv aldeles ikke er tilrettelagt i velordnede kapitler. Kun meget få mennesker følger en lige linie fra vugge til grav, og de har det efter min opfattelse temmelig kedsommeligt.” I bogen TOVE DITLEVSEN OM SIG SELV skriver hun på sin helt egen og ærlige måde om sit personlige liv, sin skrivekunst og sit forfatterskab. Fra barndommen på Vesterbro, hvor hun lærte sig selv at skrive og læse, over de fire ægteskaber, der alle endte ulykkeligt, til de mange nedture og psykoser, der førte hende ud i misbrug og indlæggelse. Igennem det hele holdt én ting ved: skrivningen. I Tove Ditlevsens selvbiografiske værk kommer man vidt omkring og samtidigt utroligt tæt på den kendte digter, der skrev af mange grunde, men mest af alt for at leve og overleve. TOVE DITLEVSEN OM SIG SELV har ikke været optrykt siden slutningen af 1980'erne.

I 1969 besluttede Tove Ditlevsen at skifte forlag. Hun henvendte sig til Mogens Knudsen, der i disse år var litterær direktør på Gyldendal. Han tog imod hende med åbne arme, han blev hendes redaktør, han læste og redigerede hendes manuskripter; og de to fik i løbet af kort tid et fortroligt forhold, der rakte langt ud over det litterære felt. Med sit skrøbelige sind var Tove Ditlevsen ustandselig i vanskeligheder og bad Mogens Knudsen om råd og dåd i forbindelse med sine økonomiske forhold, skattebetaling, den sindsoprivende skilsmisse fra Victor Andreasen, som blev realiseret i disse år, irriterende fans og besværlige veninder, ansættelsesforhold, alkohol, børn og svigerbørn, kolleger, konflikter med læger og tandlæger og psykiatere, konfrontationer i og med pressen og meget, meget mere. Brevsamlingen, der er dateret fra 1969 til 1975, er et eksempel på det samarbejde, det forhold, der kan opstå mellem en forfatter og hendes redaktør; men det er også en rørende beretning om et sårbart, begavet menneskes måde at håndtere sit indre og ydre kaos på. Brevene, der ikke har været offentliggjort før, blev fundet under oprydning i Gyldendals skønlitterære redaktions mandshøje pengeskab, hvor forlaget opbevarer manuskripter, billedmateriale m.m. fra mange år. Efter Tove Ditlevsens arvingers ønske er der udeladt to-tre sætninger, og der er blevet rettet åbenlyse slåfejl og inkonsekvenser i stavemåder; men ellers fremstår brevene i deres oprindelige form.

** NY UDGAVE I TASKEFORMAT 17x24 cm Små hverdagsproblemer er en komplet samling af de spørgsmål og svar, som er blevet bragt i Familie Journal i den 20-årige periode fra 1956-1976, hvor Tove Ditlevsen var brevkasseskribent. I alt mere end 4000 spørgsmål og svar, der her, for første gang nogensinde, bliver tilgængelige i en samlet udgivelse. Bogen giver med en utrolig rigdom et indblik i danskernes liv og hverdag. Tove Ditlevsen svarer med varme, intelligens og humor på spørgsmål om alt lige fra husholdningsbudgetter til generationsopgør, fra vold til ulykkelig forelskelse. Meget ændrer sig gennem årerne, ser man, men mennesket forbliver på samme måde udsat i tilværelsen. Derfor er Små hverdagsproblemer ikke kun spændende som en kulturhistorie over en af de vigtigste perioder i Danmarkshistorien, men også genkendelig og vildt aktuel. Bogen er et atlas over menneskelivet, en husbibel man kan tage frem, når livet igen spænder ben og man har brug for et svar fra en klog dame.

'One of Denmark's most celebrated writers' New StatesmanFrom the acclaimed author of the Copenhagen Trilogy, a searing, haunting novel of a woman on the edge, portrayed with all the vividness of lived experience. Copenhagen, 1968. Lise, a children's book writer and married mother of three, is increasingly haunted by disembodied faces and voices. She is convinced that her husband, already extravagantly unfaithful, will leave her. Most of all, she is scared that she will never write again. Yet as she descends into a world of pills and hospitals, she begins to wonder, is insanity really something to be feared, or does it bring a kind of freedom?'Ditlevsen explores the surprising contours of Lise's experience: from her point of view, madness can be funny, soft and secure, and far more enlightening than the "reality" it struggles to evade' The New York TimesTranslated by Tiina Nunnally

'Utterly, agonisingly compulsive ... a masterpiece' Liz Jensen, GuardianFollowing 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

I want to write a book about Vilhelm’s room and the events which took place in it, or arose from it; those that led to Lise’s death, which I have survived only so that I might write down the story of her and Vilhelm... The ripples from a breakup radiate outwards from the room where a married couple once loved each other, and a bizarre Lonely Hearts advert sets off a train of tragicomic events that lead to an inevitable conclusion. Tove Ditlevsen’s final novel – published a year before her suicide in 1976 – is a masterful conclusion to a great work of writing: a blackly funny and devastating tour-de-force that pulses with life even as it journeys towards death.

A new selection of poetry from the generation-defining author of The Copenhagen Trilogy, translated for the first time into EnglishWhile Tove Ditlevsen is now famous around the world as an extraordinary prose writer, in Denmark she has also long been celebrated as a poet. She published her first collection in her early twenties, and continued writing and publishing poetry until the end of her life. This new selection offers English readers a chance to explore her brilliant, surprising verse across nearly four decades of writing.In this playful, mournful, witty collection, little girls stand tip-toe inside adult bodies, achievements in literature and lethargy are unflinchingly listed, and lovers come and go like the seasons. Gorgeously translated by Jennifer Russell and Sophia Hersi Smith, with an introduction by Olga Ravn, There Lives a Young Girl in Me Who Will Not Die cements Ditlevsen as one of the twentieth century's most creative writers.

90 classic titles celebrating 90 years of Penguin Books‘Then she would feel exposed and cry, as if her life and happiness were ruined for all time, even though she could still hide it from those she only came in contact with by chance or infrequently.’Longing shimmers from these spare but profoundly moving short stories by one of Denmark’s most fearless and sharp-eyed authors. In these tales of inarticulate desire and repression, Ditlevsen pulls to the surface our deepest interiorities in devastating, exacting prose.

The acclaimed Danish poet Tove Ditlevsen's autobiographical Copenhagen Trilogy ("A masterpiece" --The Guardian) continues with Youth. Following Childhood, this second volume finds the young author consumed in trials by fire that only fuel her relentless passion for artistic freedom--placing her on a devastating and destructive path recounted in the final volume, Dependency. Forced to leave school early, Tove embarks on a checkered 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 humor, vulnerability, and poeticism.

The final volume in the renowned Danish poet Tove Ditlevsen's autobiographical Copenhagen Trilogy ("A masterpiece" --The Guardian). Following Childhood and Youth, Dependency is the searing portrait of a woman's journey through love, friendship, ambition, and addiction, from one of Denmark's most celebrated twentieth century writers Tove is only twenty, but she's already famous, a published poet, and the wife of a much older literary editor. Her path in life seems set, yet she has no idea of the struggles ahead--love affairs, wanted and unwanted pregnancies, artistic failure, and destructive addiction. As the years go by, the central tension of Tove's life comes into painful focus: the terrible lure of dependency, in all its forms, and the possibility of living freely and fearlessly--as an artist on her own terms. The final volume in the Copenhagen Trilogy, and arguably Ditlevsen's masterpiece, Dependency is a dark and blisteringly honest account of addiction, and the way out.

A New York Times 10 Best Books of the Year (2021)An NPR Best Books of the Year (2021) Called "a masterpiece" by The New York Times, the acclaimed trilogy from Tove Ditlevsen, a pioneer in the field of genre-bending confessional writing. 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 acknowledged 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. Dependency picks up the story as the narrator embarks on the first of her four marriages and goes on to describe her horrible descent 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, and she writes about female experience and identity in a way that feels very fresh and pertinent to today's discussions around feminism. Ditlevsen's trilogy is remarkable for its intensity and its immersive depiction of a world of complex female friendships, family and growing up--in this sense, it's Copenhagen's answer to Elena Ferrante's Neapolitan Novels. She can also be seen as a spiritual forerunner of confessional writers like Karl Ove Knausgaard, Annie Ernaux, Rachel Cusk and Deborah Levy. Her trilogy is drawn from her own experiences but reads like the most compelling kind of fiction. Born in a working-class neighborhood in Copenhagen in 1917, Ditlevsen became famous for her poetry while still a teenager, and went on to write novels, stories, and memoirs. Having been dismissed by the critical establishment in her lifetime as a working-class female writer, she is now being rediscovered and championed as one of Denmark's most important modern authors.

By the acclaimed author of The Copenhagen Trilogy, a startling and darkly funny volume of selected poetry, the first to be translated into English. It was a meaningless daylike what you calllove It was a ThursdayIn parentheses. The brackets around itHave already fadedLife tastes of ashAnd is bearable. From one of Denmark's most celebrated twentieth-century writers, the author of the acclaimed Copenhagen Trilogy, comes There Lives a Young Girl in Me Who Will Not Die, a major volume of selected poetry written throughout Tove Ditlevsen's life. Infused with the same wry nihilism, quiet intensity, dark humor, and crystalline genius that readers savor in her prose, these are heartbreak poems, childhood poems, self-portraits, death poems, wounded poems, confessional poems, and love poems--poems that stare into the surfaces that seduce and deceive us. They describe childhood, longing, loss, and memory, obsessively tracing their imprints and intrusions upon everyday life. With morbid curiosity, Ditlevsen's poems turn toward the uncanny and the abject, approaching gingerly. They stitch the gray scale of daily disappointment with vivid, unsparing detail, a degree of precision that renders loneliness psychedelic. Speaking across generations to both the passions of youth and the agonies of adulthood, There Lives a Young Girl in Me Who Will Not Die reveals everyday life stripped of its excesses, exposing its bones and bare qualities: the normal and the strange, the meaningful and the meaningless. These startling, resonant poems are both canonical and contemporary, and demand to be shared with friends, loved ones, nemeses, and strangers alike.

A searing final novel about the collapse of a marriage and its aftermath, by the author of the modern classic Copenhagen Trilogy. I want to write a book about Vilhelm's room and the events which took place in it, or arose from it; those that led to Lise's death, which I have survived only so that I might write down the story of her and Vilhelm . . . The ripples from a breakup radiate outward from the room where a married couple once loved each other, and a bizarre Lonely Hearts ad sets off a train of tragicomic events that leads to an inevitable conclusion. Vilhelm's Room, Tove Ditlevsen's final novel--published a year before her untimely death in 1976--is a powerful conclusion to an extraordinary life as a poet, novelist, and memoirist: a blackly funny and devastating tour de force that pulses with life even as it journeys toward death.

By the acclaimed author of The Copenhagen Trilogy, a startling and darkly funny volume of selected poetry, the first to be translated into English. From one of Denmark's most celebrated twentieth-century writers, the author of the acclaimed Copenhagen Trilogy, comes There Lives a Young Girl in Me Who Will Not Die, a major volume of selected poetry written throughout Tove Ditlevsen's life. Infused with the same wry nihilism, quiet intensity, dark humor, and crystalline genius that readers savor in her prose, these are heartbreak poems, childhood poems, self-portraits, death poems, wounded poems, confessional poems, and love poems--poems that stare into the surfaces that seduce and deceive us. They describe childhood, longing, loss, and memory, obsessively tracing their imprints and intrusions upon everyday life. With morbid curiosity, Ditlevsen's poems turn toward the uncanny and the abject, approaching daily disappointment with vivid, unsparing detail. Speaking across generations to both the passions of youth and the agonies of adulthood, There Lives a Young Girl in Me Who Will Not Die reveals everyday life stripped of its excesses, exposing its bones and bare qualities: the meaningful and the meaningless. These startling, resonant poems are both canonical and contemporary, and demand to be shared with friends, loved ones, nemeses, and strangers alike.

The celebrated Danish poet Tove Ditlevsen begins the Copenhagen Trilogy ("A masterpiece" --The Guardian) with Childhood, her coming-of-age memoir about pursuing a life and a passion beyond the confines of her upbringing--and into the difficult years described in Youth and Dependency Tove knows she is a misfit whose childhood is made for a completely different girl. In her working-class neighborhood in Copenhagen, she is enthralled by her wild, red-headed friend Ruth, who initiates her into adult secrets. But Tove cannot reveal her true self to her or to anyone else. For "long, mysterious words begin to crawl across" her soul, and she comes to realize that she has a vocation, something unknowable within her--and that she must one day, painfully but inevitably, leave the narrow street of her childhood behind. Childhood, the first volume in the Copenhagen Trilogy, is a visceral portrait of girlhood and female friendship, told with lyricism and vivid intensity.

Called "a masterpiece" by The New York Times, the acclaimed trilogy from Tove Ditlevsen, a pioneer in the field of genre-bending confessional writing. 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 acknowledged 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. Dependency picks up the story as the narrator embarks on the first of her four marriages and goes on to describe her horrible descent 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, and she writes about female experience and identity in a way that feels very fresh and pertinent to today's discussions around feminism. Ditlevsen's trilogy is remarkable for its intensity and its immersive depiction of a world of complex female friendships, family, and growing up--in this sense, it's Copenhagen's answer to Elena Ferrante's Neapolitan novels. She can also be seen as a spiritual forerunner of confessional writers like Karl Ove Knausgaard, Annie Ernaux, Rachel Cusk, and Deborah Levy. Her trilogy is drawn from her own experiences, but reads like the most compelling kind of fiction. Born in a working-class neighborhood in Copenhagen in 1917, Ditlevsen became famous for her poetry while still a teenager, and went on to write novels, stories, and memoirs before committing suicide in 1976. Having been dismissed by the critical establishment in her lifetime as a working-class female writer, she is now being rediscovered and championed as one of Denmark's most important modern authors, with "Tove fever" gripping readers.

From Tove Ditlevsen, the acclaimed author of the Copenhagen Trilogy, comes The Faces, a searing, haunting novel of a woman on the edge, portrayed with all the vividness of lived experience. Copenhagen, 1968. Lise, a children's book writer and married mother of three, is increasingly haunted by disembodied faces and voices. She is convinced that her husband, already extravagantly unfaithful, will leave her. Most of all, she is scared that she will never write again. Yet as she descends into a world of pills and hospitals, she begins to wonder--is insanity really something to be feared, or does it bring a kind of freedom?

The Trouble with Happiness is a powerful new collection of short stories by Tove Ditlevsen, "a terrifying talent" (Parul Sehgal, The New York Times). 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 marriage and family life in midcentury Copenhagen pulse currents of desire, violence, and despair, as women and men struggle to escape from the roles assigned to them and dream of becoming free and happy--without ever truly understanding what that might mean. Tove Ditlevsen is one of Denmark's most famous and beloved writers, and her autobiographical Copenhagen Trilogy was hailed as a masterpiece on republication in English, named a New York Times Best Book of the Year, and lauded for its wry humor, limpid prose, and powerful honesty. The poignant and understated stories in The Trouble with Happiness, written in the 1950s and 1960s and never before translated into English, offer readers a new chance to encounter the quietly devastating work of this essential twentieth-century writer.