This is a collection resplendent with longing. In these compact pages,people meet without actually connecting,travellers set off but never seem to find home. We meet them on the fjords of Norway,in the bustle of Los Angeles,and among the lights of Copenhagen.
Outsiders yearn to be on the inside,insiders are desperate to be free. A writer befriends an ex-lover's mother. An elderly man offers his body to aging women. A woman's childhood memories of wild swimming draw her back to the water.
In prose that is both elegantly spare and saturated with emotion,Dorthe Nors shines a light into forgotten corners and conjures darkness where it's least expected. Her characteristic sharpness and sense of humour is ever-present,catching us when the melancholy threatens to come too close. Love,cruelty,friendship,and loneliness are all here,in these stories that brim with life.
Publisher: Pushkin PressISBN: 9781782275503Dimensions: 198 x 129 mm
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Lyrical stream-of-consciousness prose is intercut with short,blunt sentences... Misha Hoekstra's translation delicately renders Nors's intensity,along with her subtletyHow slippery the work of the Danish writer Dorthe Nors is,how it sideswipes and gleams... The sense of simultaneous,furious upwelling into text and retraction into shame or reticence gives the stories a powerful undercurrent,as if they were constantly wrestling with themselves.Cool,razor-sharp stories by a brilliant Danish writer... A brainy collection perfectly constructed to put you on edge.Here are fourteen short stories that crisscross borders,both emotional and geographic,while exploring and inhabiting various threshold zones,either directly or by allusion. Often darkly comic and unsettling,Nors's work is always intense,always intuitive,and rich with thought.In fourteen effervescent stories,Dorthe Nors plumbs the depths of the human heart,from desire to melancholy and everything in between.Nors's writing creeps up on you,and then overwhelms you with its emotional power. She is a masterDorthe Nors is fantastic!Reading Nors's work,one is reminded of the thrills and dangers of livingNors's reinvention of experimental fiction is marvellousThey have that sense of life of them... within four pages,she takes you through an extraordinary life - makes you feel exhausted but invigoratedLyrical stream-of-consciousness prose is intercut with short,blunt sentences... Misha Hoekstra's translation delicately renders Nors's intensity,along with her subtletyNors writes important modern women's fiction...she gives back agency and centrality to older women'There are bottomless lakes in these brilliantly uneasy stories,and cold,'unknowable'landscapes,creaking with snow and ice,as in her spare,elegant prose Nors eavesdrops on the inner lives and complicated emotions of her yearning charactersThere's something about the deceptive simplicity of Dorthe Nors's stories that floors meAn unflinching eye makes the new queen of Danish literature stand outDorthe Nors is a writer of moments-quiet,raw portraits of existential meditation,at times dyspeptic,but never unsympatheticAstunningly original new voice from Denmark... Dorthe Nors has the fabulous talent (...) of restraint... A major new voice in European literatureOne of Denmark's most inventive and acclaimed contemporary writersThroughout,remarkable characters and wonderful lines emerge from the artful prose. This is worth downing in one sitting.
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