An unforgettable collection of stories from the author of The Copenhagen Trilogy

‘The most important thing is probably always precisely the thing you can’t have. That’s where all the happiness is’

In these brief, acid-sharp stories of love, marriage and family from one of Denmark’s most celebrated writers, the ordinary events of everyday life – a wife anxious not to wake her husband, a little boy losing his father’s beloved knife, a woman’s obsessive longing for a yellow silk umbrella – become dark and disconcerting. Here Tove Ditlevsen explores yearning, fear and the elusiveness of that strange thing called happiness.

‘The purity and dazzling insight of Ditlevsen’s writing speaks for itself’ Daily Telegraph

‘Authentic, unforced and utterly lucid’ Sunday Times

‘Ditlevsen’s wonderful and devastatingly bleak short stories simmer with melancholy and despair’ Daily Mail

Translated by Michael Favala Goldman

From one of Denmark’s most celebrated writers and the author of Childhood, Youth and Dependency, these short stories are brief, devastating, acid-sharp portrayals of love, marriage and family in mid-century Copenhagen. Here the ordinary events of everyday life – a wife anxious not to wake her husband, a little boy losing his father’s beloved knife, a married woman’s obsessive longing for a yellow silk umbrella, a girl dreaming of a masquerade ball – become dark and disconcerting, as we see what lies beneath. Translated into English for the first time, these are stories that explore yearning, fear, despair and the elusiveness of that strange thing called happiness.

Translated by Michael Favala Goldman

‘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