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Contents Debutant 03 Hanne Højgaard Viemose Novels 03 Benn Q. Holm 04 Dy Plambeck // Hanne Richard Beck 05 Helle Helle // Jonas T. Bengtsson 06 Jørn Riel // Kirsten Hammann 07 Kirsten Thorup // Lars Frost 08 Vibeke Grønfeldt 09 Thorstein Thomsen Children’s Books 09 Egon Matthiessen 10 Recently sold Crime 12 Lotte & Søren Hammer // Morten Hesseldahl 13 Hans Jakob Helms // Steffen Jacobsen Poetry 14 Janina Katz // Nikolaj Stochholm
15 Top 10 - Best selling Danish books, March to August 2011 16 Support Schemes 18 Published Titles
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Cool and loving & raw and sensitive debut By Mai Misfeldt, translated by Charlotte Barslund First novels often feature a young person on a journey of self-discovery and so it is with Hanne Højgaard Viemose’s debut, Hannah, (‘Hannah’), but this time the story is told with a rare energy and unpredictability. The novel is set Down Under, in the one horse town of Tully in Northern Queensland - refreshing in itself considering how much of Danish fiction is local - where the young female first person narrator, Anne, on a confused and extended backpacker trip spends her days working hard at a gloomy rain-soaked banana plantation and her nights at the local pub. Anne has many features in common with her author, a relationship that is further emphasised by the inclusion of photos of the author as a backpacker. The biographical element is a recurrent feature in young fiction, but it is primarily the depiction of life at the banana plantation which makes Viemose’s book stand out. There are toads that can spit one metre, snakes
everywhere, rats’ nests among the bananas and crocodiles lurking in the water. It is a raw environment made up of Aborigines and Aussies who don’t fit in anywhere else. F*****g, f**k and bloody this and bloody that feature regularly in the dialogue. Everything is viewed through a restrained and fairly unsentimental perspective. The reader never learns much about who Anne really is, but a picture emerges of a vulnerable, introverted and sexually confused 19-year-old on the run from both Denmark’s norms and her own sexuality. A girl who called herself Hans when she was a child and who fell apart when she grew breasts and turned into Anne. It is a book about the right to choose who you want to be, including your sexuality, and the novel ends on a fine flickering openness and a kind of symbolic healing where Hans and Anne fuse together as the palindrome, Hannah. The novel is aimed at adult readers, but is equally relevant to a younger audience.
Photo: Hanne Højgaard Viemose
Hanne Højgaard Viemose
Hanne Højgaard Viemose Hannah / Hannah Gyldendal 2011, 186 pp. Foreign Rights Gyldendal Group Agency Sofie Voller Phone: + 45 33 75 55 55 sofie_voller@gyldendal.dk
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The trend spotter’s keen and faintly ironic eye By Mikkel Bruun Zangenberg, transl. by Charlotte Barslund With Byen og øen (‘The City and the Island’) Benn Q. Holm has delivered a sophisticated account of the last thirty years of world history as seen through the lens of five young Danes and in constant oscillation between the local and global. Denmark’s capital, Copenhagen, is where the five friends, the actress and sensualist Molly, the wannabe film director Espen, stockbroker Anders who is the son of a judge, Camilla the wife of an ambassador and the budding Icelandic author Pétur meet at the start of the 1980s. From here on in three major sections where each character tells their own story, Holm describes how their ways part and briefly cross before they meet up again against the thundering backdrop of countless minor and major violent events around the world. The story is framed by a prologue and epilogue when one of the characters buys a Danish island where the
friends are eventually reunited. Holm has the trendspotter’s keen and faintly ironic eye for the touches that evoke each period: the music, the clothes, the slang and mores of each social class and decade. But Holm also assumes an almost Olympian position in his portrayal of the ups and downs of the many human destinies in a fast-moving world which is rarely fair and always cruel. Byen og øen is an example of globalisation, a literary representation of how the local and global are inseparable entities just as the evolution of the individual and the species are closely interlinked though the threads may not always be visible to the naked eye. But it is also a tale of destiny and a generational novel. With equal amounts of melancholy and sympathy the novel follows five friends who are all of the same age as the author and like him shaped by Copenhagen. The novel ends in medias res, in the midst of life and in the midst of things, after the last glocalised snapshot has been successfully delivered to the reader.
Photo: Thomas A.
Benn Q. Holm
Benn Q. Holm Byen og øen / The City and the Island Lindhardt & Ringhof 2011, 472 pp. Foreign Rights Lindhardt & Ringhof Susanne Gribfeldt Phone: +45 33 69 50 00 susanne.gribfeldt@ lindhardtogringhof.dk Previous titles published in Germany, Russia
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Dy Plambeck Photo: Isak Hoffmeyer
A new and lively voice in young Danish fiction
Dy Plambeck Gudfar / Godfather Gyldendal Group Agency 2011, 176 pp. Foreign Rights Gyldendal Group Agency Sofie Voller Phone: + 45 33 75 55 55 sofie_voller@gyldendal.dk Previous titles published in Sweden | NOVELS |
By May Schack, translated by Charlotte Barslund There is a devil-may-care narrative joy in Dy Plambeck’s novel which is populated by colourful characters who don’t really fit in anywhere, but live their lives very far from generally accepted ideas of normality. The main character, Uffe, has grown up with a clingy father, who nevertheless throws him out when Uffe chooses to become a bricklayer rather than a butcher. The young Uffe joins a motorcycle gang – an environment captured vividly and with humour. Uffe’s mother, Tenna, abandoned him when he was a baby. She has found it difficult to reintegrate since serving three years in prison after the Second World War when she was convicted of treason. Her crime: serving Germans in a canteen. Once out of prison she becomes the mistress of a successful cyclist who later dumps her in favour of his wife and career. Tenna tries to make it work with the gloomy Poul, but this halfhearted relationship lasts only until Uffe is born. Uffe’s epiphany occurs at a motorcycle meet and he
Hanne Richard Beck
Photo: Morten Holtum
Dystopian novel about a barren, cynical society
Hanne Richard Beck 7 Sydøst / 7 Southeast Gyldendal 2011, 309 pp. Foreign Rights Gyldendal Group Agency Jenny Thor Phone: +45 33 75 57 48 jenny_thor@ gyldendalgroupagency.dk Previous titles published in Norway, Sweden
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applies his newfound faith in a unique way; likewise he runs his small brick laying business in a rather unorthodox fashion. As a middle-aged man he tracks down his mother, moves in with her and becomes a dedicated godfather to his neighbour’s daughter who accompanies him everywhere in his van emblazoned with the name Guldmureren (‘The Golden Brickie’). Gudmureren (‘God’s Brickie’) is excessive, he reasons. The wild action - only hinted at here - is written in a fluid language that displays a vitality of imagination and the courage to write to the very edges of credibility. And yet we recognise so much, such as the depiction of a sparsely populated area at the fringes of society, which all rich countries have today. It is an attractive feature that the author never pities her characters, but offers them up as an alternative to middle-class ideals. It is as if many people today have succumbed to narrow ideas and restricted parameters for how life should be lived. Dy Plambeck challenges this in her second novel, which puts her on the map as a lively, new voice in young Danish fiction.
By May Schack, translated by Glyn Jones Hanne Richardt Beck’s novel portrays a post-catastrophe society fighting with the after-effects of huge climatic disasters and a massive stream of refugees. The date is 2034 and the place is known as the Northern Region. It consists of districts where the well-to-do live and then 7 South East, where the maladjusted or unfortunate scrape an anarchical existence. This world of the future is governed by the Consistent Democratic Party, the brutality of which is camouflaged in newspeak. Their values are based on TbiM – The best in Mankind. They maintain that mankind is equipped with an internal tuning fork that distinguishes between right and wrong. Their slogan is “we take care of you”. Primarily, they keep an eye on people. And the control regime has now completely taken over the individual person. The two main characters in the novel are the young woman schoolteacher, My, who struggles to teach, i.e. to standardise, the children in accordance with all the many precepts, and the model refugee Samuel, who, as a doctor, has been allowed to immigrate and now plays a role as a politician. But it is impossible for him to see through the power and, as in the case of
My, veil after veil is torn from his face. With great imaginative power, Hanne Richardt Beck creates a fictitious universe right from its very foundations, rather in the style of Margaret Atwood’s dystopias, which are also based on concern for our world and the way in which it is developing. What do we do with a world destroyed by climate in which floods of refugees try to get in through the doors of the rich, and where many people are already marginalised in the ruined outlying districts? Beck provides neither answers nor solutions, but she portrays the brutal Gleichschaltung and the division of people into the competent and the incompetent. A lifeless future scenario in which people are afraid of each other and scared of diverging even the slightest bit in their behaviour. A place where you constantly have to show that you deserve to live and in which all emotions must, as the phrase has it, be “adjusted”. And in which a terrible psychological control, enforced by both new technology and psychological means, is applied in the supervision of each single individual. The main thrust of the novel is the picture of what it means to live in a society in which people are no longer able or permitted to be themselves.
Sometimes things just happen By May Schack, translated by Charlotte Barslund Helle Helle is a writer who deliberately avoids abstract expressions, but creates intimacy and existential depth through very concrete depictions of her characters’ behaviour. Everything is thus seen and heard in Helle Helle’s novel about a young woman, the first person narrator Dorte, who rents a house in a small provincial town. From here she commutes to the capital where she spends more time dawdling in a shopping centre than at the university where she is a student. She dreams about becoming a writer, but never gets started. She never gets started on anything. Her house is next door to the railway and the constantly passing trains are a metaphor of her stagnant existence. She jumps on a train only to wonder aimlessly around the capital before catching the train back. How does a young person find a foothold in the world? This is the novel’s underlying question which translates into a blow-by-blow account of how Dorte fills up her days. “Sometimes things just happen,” she says at one point and this apparently innocent statement demonstrates both her lack of a sense of direction in her life and the will or ability to take conscious action. Helle Helle’s first person narrator surely isn’t the first person to experience such a fumbling youth. Dorte’s recent past is accounted for in flash backs; she has moved many times - living first with her aunt, then with various boyfriends. Relationships begin and end in the same haphazard fashion. There is drama underneath the stagnant surface: the aunt who hides her unhappiness and pain behind a mask of jollity suddenly breaks down and is admitted to hospital. Dorte’s coping strategies are more passive and rebuffing. “I’m fine,” she always says when anyone asks. Subconsciously she makes an effort not to feel too much. Every description conceals a profound experience of loss and emptiness from which she cannot extricate herself. So simple, so beautiful and so truthfully depicted by Helle Helle. Not a single line rings false in this little gem of a novel whose realism is in a class of its own.
Helle Helle Dette burde skrives i nutid / This should be written in the present Samleren 2011, 158 pp. Foreign Rights Gyldendal Group Agency Sofie Voller Phone: + 45 33 75 55 55 Photo: Sacha Maric
sofie_voller@gyldendal.dk Previous titles published in The Czech Republic, Estonia, The Netherlands, Norway, Sweden, Germany, France,
Photo: Robin Skjoldborg
Helle Helle
Jonas T. Bengtsson Et eventyr / A Fairy Tale Rosinante 2011, 383 pp. Foreign Rights Salomonsson Agency Szilvia Molnar Phone: +46 (0)8 22 32 11 szilvia@salomonssonagency. com Previous titles published in Germany, Italy, Norway, Russia
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Jonas T. Bengtsson From father to son By May Schack, translated by Charlotte Barslund Every night a father tells his son a fairy tale about the King and Prince who have lost their home and have gone out into the world to find and kill the White Queen. The fairy tale is a metaphor for the novel’s homeless couple, a father and son, who live outside society - and more importantly is hiding from it. When the novel opens in 1986, the boy is six years old. He doesn’t go to school, but is taught by his father, a well-read and rather unconventional man. The boy, however, is oblivious to his father’s eccentricity because of their socially isolated existence. The novel is told from the boy’s point of view and he remains unswervingly loyal to his father who constitutes his whole world. The relationship between them is depicted with particular tenderness. Jonas T. Bengtsson has written an unusual and highly original novel about living outside society and its norms. As in every good folktale the protagonists travel from place to place where they undergo fresh trials. They learn to fly under the radar by using only cash or by stealing. What could have been a conventional novel in the style of social realism about an intelligent, mentally disturbed man on the run from the authorities with his son has been set within in the poetic frame of the cruel fairy tale with great success. However, in contrast to fairy tales, there can of course be no happy ever after - the father’s attempt to kill the White Queen in the shape of a botched assassination of a young politician puts an end to the pair’s adventures. Part Two jumps to 1996 where the boy is now a disruptive, pot-smoking teenager in his mother’s new family. He is successful at school, but cannot embrace any values or enter into any sort of community. This applies to many other characters he meets on his journey through more or less questionable environments, vividly depicted with both clarity of vision and a particularly brutal fantasy. Life is about the survival of the fittest. Ultimately, this is a novel about what we pass on to each other. And how we survive the fragility of the human condition.
Poland
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Photo: Kamilla Bryndum
Jørn Riel Unsentimental affection for the characters By Mikkel Bruun Zangenberg , translated by Charlotte Barslund With Den lange rejse (‘The Long Journey’) the author Jørn Riel - who in 2010 at the age of 79 was awarded Denmark’s most prestigious literary honour, The Danish Academy’s Grand Prize - has created a new ending to what was originally in 1979-1980 an epic tale in the form of a trilogy for older children: Drengen som ville være menneske (‘The Boy Who Wanted To Be Human’), Leiv, Narua og Apuluk (‘Leiv, Narua and Apuluk’) and Videre mod nord (‘Further North’). Now a fourth volume has been added, Rejsen til Vinland (‘The Journey To Vinland’), and the four books have been published as a major connected work. Den lange rejse depicts in four separate and yet thematically linked books the meeting of the boy Leiv Steinursson with two Inuit children, Narua and Apuluk. At the start of the novel Leiv is consumed by the desire to avenge the murder of his father, Steinur, and secretly leaves his family and stows away on board Thorstein’s, the killer, Viking ship which is bound for Greenland where Thorstein has been banished for three years as punishment for the murder. The ship is lost at sea, but miraculously Leiv manages to save himself and reaches Greenland where he meets two Inuit children. Their meeting, which also tracks the origins of the awkward colonial relationship between Denmark and Greenland, results in a number of adventures and perilous events. Leiv must undergo many trials before finally being accepted as an equal by the Inuits. The final test involves him travelling to Vinland, the Viking name for North America, and then back to Greenland. Riel has constructed a comprehensive, circular and epic arc for his protagonist and an account of his journey to adulthood, all depicted with Riel’s hallmark: Boundless warm humour and unsentimental affection for his characters combined with a remarkable talent for the fundamental, almost pre-modern, power of narrative.
Kirsten Hammann Se på mig / Look at me Gyldendal 2011, 460 pp. Foreign Rights Leonhardt & Høier Anneli Høier Phone: +45 33 13 25 23 anneli@leonhardt-hoier.dk Previous titles published in The Netherlands, UK, France, Germany, Iceland, Norway, Sweden
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Kirsten Hammann Humorous narrative about the female gender in modern society By Lilian Munk Rösing, translated by Charlotte Barslund Kirsten Hammann writes a type of reflective chick lit using a mixture of irony and empathy to expose what could be labelled as the consciousness of women’s magazines. Her characters always exist at a post catastrophe point in their lives and so it is in Hammann’s new novel, Se på mig (‘Look at me’). The book’s 35-year-old female main character, Julie, is not only dumped by her boyfriend, she also falls down the stairs and smashes her knee. Abandoned and injured she sits in her flat, her head spinning with all the advice and golden rules she has picked up from women’s magazines and lifestyle TV channels. One of those rules is that a single woman should try to masturbate daily in order to maintain her sexual allure. Julie, however, is not alone in her flat. She takes on a male tenant, Sune, a writer with rapidly developing writer’s block. Where Julie gives us access to a mindset heavily influenced by women’s magazines, Sune takes us to the world of the lads’ mag: gadgets, babes and dreams of success are - according to this novel - the stuff the male mind is made of, while masturbation and displacement activi-
Jørn Riel
ties take up all of Sune’s time.
Den lange rejse /
It is interesting (and for Hammann a new development) to
The Long Journey
alternate between a female and male perspective. To shift
Lindhardt & Ringhof 2011,
between the woman’s attempts to understand a man and
247 pp.
the man’s abortive attempts to understand what it is like to be a woman. The issue of how to gain access to someone
Foreign Rights
else’s inner core is the driving force of the novel’s plot.
Gaïa Editions, Susanne Juul
When Julie buys sex aids online, Sune buys a small sur-
susanne.juul@
veillance camera disguised as a teddy which he places in
gaia-editions.com
Julie’s bedroom. This set-up creates the novel’s suspense: how long will it
Previous titles published in
be before Julie and Sune have sex? Hammann draws out
France, Germany, Greenland,
the characters’ unresolved sexual tension for as long as
Italy, Latvia, Russia, Spain,
she can before finally satisfying her readers’ desire with
Sweden
protracted sex scenes. Hammann’s writing is entertaining and witty while still dealing with the big questions: | NOVELS |
how do you move on when you find yourself at rock bottom? Can you ever access the mind of the opposite sex? And to what extent are our lives today shaped by recipes, women’s magazines and lifestyle gurus?
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Epoch-making encounters By Lilian Munk Rösing, translated by Charlotte Barslund Ana is single, a Danish career woman who works in international finance and feels most at home among people in suits in tall glass buildings with lifts. At the start of Kirsten Thorup’s novel we meet her in a luxury hotel in The Gambia; her life coach having prescribed a holiday for symptoms of stress. The glittering illuminated hotel heavily guarded by the army lies like an artificial island surrounded by African darkness, but a voice from this darkness reaches all the way to Ana when she sits insulated by her iPod and sunglasses on the beach: “A supernatural beauty, the fine sound of a silver bell consumed her […] a trembling child’s voice crept under her skin and touched her. She was completely unprepared.” The voice belongs to a ragged African girl with a sales tray around her neck who has a cataclysmic effect on Ana. The girl, Mariama, becomes the most important person in Ana’s life and ideas start to form in Ana’s mind which have no place at all in the rational and efficient world of a successful finance manager: the
belief that Mariama is her platonic lost half, that the two of them could live together as sisters. It is neither a sense of duty nor compassion that prompts Ana to invest her entire existence in giving the impoverished African girl a rich European life; it is the peculiar hold which the little silver voice has over her. The novel moves from The Gambia where Ana meets Mariama, to Copenhagen where she misses her, and finally to London where they are reunited and where we hear the story from Mariama’s perspective before the book culminates in a dissolution of the boundaries between fantasy and reality. Ana’s beloved finance company is depicted as a totalitarian organism where hard-nosed discipline is disguised as democracy, coaching and relentless self-improvement. The Africans and their reality are portrayed brutally and without sentiment. Though Thorup is sensitive and sympathetic towards her characters, she never resorts to simplistic plotlines, but delivers both a critical portrayal of society and a moving and thought-provoking account of how an encounter with the alien can turn someone’s life upside down.
Photo: Morten Holtum
Kirsten Thorup
Kirsten Thorup Tilfældets Gud / God Of Chance Gyldendal 2011, 315 pp. Foreign Rights Gyldendal Group Agency Jenny Thor Phone: +45 33 75 57 48 jenny_thor@ gyldendalgroupagency.dk Previous titles published in The Netherlands, England, France, Germany, Greenland, Latvia, Norway, Sweden
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Critisism of welfare in literary experimental form By May Schack, translated by Russell Dees Skønvirke (‘Arts and Crafts’) is the third and final part of a trilogy by Lars Frost, a young Danish writer whose first two volumes Smukke biler efter krigen. Knaldroman (‘Beautiful Cars After The War. Pulp Fiction’) and Ubevidst rødgang. Ingeniørroman (‘Jaywalking. An Engineering Novel’) were published in 2004 and 2008. The trilogy takes the shape of a prolonged and from a literary point of view sophisticated criticism of the Danish - and thus by implication – the Scandinavian welfare state. Frost’s starting point is that the welfare state sees itself as the incarnation of goodness and justice - and it is this self-image which the author challenges with melancholy and misanthropy. His criticism escalates during the trilogy and Skønvirke thus becomes the culmination of a major project. Skønvirke is an unusual literary experiment - the novel imitates the structure of the fifteen stages of the Cath-
olic requiem mass and each section takes its Latin title from it. In the first thirteen sections Frost introduces us to a subtle, ironic version of the femi-crime, as it has become known, a type of Scandinavian crime fiction with a female heroine and some focus on the protagonist’s private and intimate life - the Swedish crime writer Liza Marklund is one such example. Thus the reader is offered a crime story with a frantic and partially unresolved plot; however, Frost goes on to subvert many of the genre’s conventions and makes it clear to the reader that the plot is both a parody and a criticism of femi-crime. At the end of the novel Frost’s plot and the two final sections conclude in a dramatic dystopia where the semantics go crazy, so that both the language, its meaning and the reader’s expectations of the novel are violated. In this way the dystopia becomes total, nothing escapes the literary, social or political age Frost depicts, not even the language or the form of the novel itself.
Photo: Cato Lein
Lars Frost
Lars Frost Skønvirke / Arts and Crafts Gyldendal 2011, 270 pp. Foreign Rights Gyldendal Group Agency Sofie Voller Phone: + 45 33 75 55 55 sofie_voller@gyldendal.dk
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Vibeke Grønfeldt Livliner / Lifelines Samleren 2011, 528 pp. Foreign Rights Gyldendal Group Agency Jenny Thor Phone: +45 33 75 57 48 jenny_thor@ Photo: Lars Gjødvad
gyldendalgroupagency.dk Previous titles published in Estonia, France, Norway
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Vibeke Grønfeldt Agatha’s Time By Mai Misfeldt, translated by Charlotte Barslund I have said it after the publication of each of the four volumes. And now I’m saying it again: the Nordic Council’s Literature Prize ought to go to Vibeke Grønfeldt for the Agatha Quartet. Four volumes, more than 1600 pages, a life and a century portrayed in a both down-to-earth and sensuous, singing prose. The presentation of a 90-year life that at the same time reflects the entire technological development taking place over this period. From a society based on agriculture to one founded on information technology. One small human life, but a whole world revolution: two wars, electricity, sewerage, moon landing, tractors, cars, aeroplanes, telephone, radio, TV, computer and internet. From a life in which you had personally to feed the cows, muck out and milk, to a life in which everything can be bought packaged in a supermarket. From a life in which everything depended on the weather and on everyone’s overall contribution to one in which you no longer need to wonder where your heating is coming from and in which everyone minds their own business. From a life with a solid common framework and in which the opening of a library was a milepost to a life offering an infinite number of possibilities and in which everything can be found on the Internet. This is a history of Denmark on a high literary level though it must in no way be seen as a series of historical novels, as is demonstrated not least by the array of pro-verbs, manners of speech and the echoes of song titles. Mindet (‘The Memory’) (2005), I min tid (‘In My Time’) (2006), Indretningen (‘The Arrangement’) (2008) and Livliner (‘Lifelines’) (2011) together form the story of a single person. They tell of a hard and vulnerable, awkward and temperamental, linguistically and visually gifted woman’s struggle with the way the world is arranged. Told in a language that can paint the most wonderful, sensual, lyrical pictures and be completely unadorned, bare statements, idiosyncratic and mischievous. We are present at the very moment that is sensed and reflected in Agatha, and without any intention of establishing an overall interpretation, all these moments and these
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glimpses of real life as it is lived combine to provide a long, progressive account: in whole sentences and half sentences, in contradictions and lies, mistakes, dreams and longings, clear and insightful as is the human mind. No explanations, no judgements, but the world as it exists within a human being here and now: at the ages of 10, 30, 50, 80 and 90. We meet Agatha for the first time, reluctantly on her way out of her mother’s womb! We are out in the country at some date around 1910, and Agatha is born at home in her mother’s family farm. Here Agatha grows up with her parents and three siblings. She is a strange little girl, temperamental, stubborn and touchy on the outside but soft and apprehensive inside. With a role to play on the farm even as a child. She knows every corner and is better at milking than the girls brought in from the town. Before she is eight years old, she unhesitatingly chops off the head of a hen, and before she has her first sexual experiences she can plunge a knife into the soft skin of a pig and remove a piglet’s testicles. She experiences fear at night, and perhaps the world is merely something she imagines. But come the day, and the work is there again, with all its cohesive force. Laziness is the most serious sin, and as she doesn’t believe in God any longer, she can never be forgiven. Agatha has her own logic, with which we become closely acquainted as the four volumes progress. “Thinking makes you weak, and thinking makes you strong.” There is no subduing her, and when her parents believe they have found a suitable husband for her (it is not such a long time since we had arranged marriages in Denmark), she refuses. Instead, on account of an unwanted pregnancy, she ends up together with the town’s gentle painter. In the last volume, Agatha has taken over the town pharmacy, in which capacity she develops her own way of providing medical care for the local citizens. A lot of people can be in need of tranquillizers; hypochondriacs are given packets of vitamin C! Agatha is no nostalgic, but a woman who very much lives in her own time. And she is a fabulous travelling companion for the reader.
Return trip to Hollywood By Marie Louise Kjølbye, translated by Charlotte Barslund Thorstein Thomsen’s Rock Hudson skal ikke dø i Ukraine (‘Rock Hudson will not die in the Ukraine’) is a biographical novel of international calibre about the Danish-German Detlef Sierck who under the name Douglas Sirk became one of Hollywood’s greatest golden age film directors. It is also a fascinating story of an immigrant: Sierck (1897-1987) grew up in Hamburg, the son of Danish parents, where he soon became hugely successful as a theatre and film director before fleeing to the US when the Nazis came to power. In 1938 Sierck and his Jewish wife, Hilde, caught the very last steamer from Rotterdam to the US. Between 1942 and 1958 Sierck directed twenty-nine movies in the US, averaging almost two a year, from war films to sensitive melodramas. Based on the sparse - and often contradictory – information Sierck provided about his life, Thomsen tells the story of a man who through his art miraculously recreated the mood of the old Europe he had left behind. The book’s emotional turning point is Sierck’s
loss of his son, Klaus, who died on the Eastern front at the age of nineteen. Sierck found a kind of substitute in his friendship with his son’s American lookalike - the young Rock Hudson. Sierck made Hudson a star and cast him as the lead in many of his films, but not in the war movie, ‘A Time To Love And A Time To Die’ (1958) written by the Western front author Remarque. Sierck could not bear for Rock Hudson to die in the Ukraine as his son had done. In his introduction to the book Thomsen explains how he became obsessed with Sierck after watching ‘All That Heaven Allows’ (1955) one Easter in 2008, a film where Sierck in particular cultivates the expressionist style which became his trademark and which was the inspiration for Fassbender’s ‘Fear Eats The Soul’ (1974): ‘I think the story is too big and that I’m too small.’ This has proved not to be the case. Thorstein Thomsen’s biographical novel moves and impresses the reader, especially because the author respects that the truth about a human being can only be sought and never found.
Photo: Robin Skjoldborg
Thorstein Thomsen
Thorstein Thomsen Rock Hudson skal ikke dø i Ukraine / Rock Hudson will not die in the Ukraine Rosinante 2011, 432 pp. Foreign Rights Gyldendal Group Agency Sofie Voller Phone: + 45 33 75 55 55 sofie_voller@gyldendal.dk Previous titles published in The Netherlands, Korea, Spain, Sweden
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Egon Mathiesen Relevant children’s books written from a humanistic perspective By Mai Misfeldt, translated by Russell Dees Many children know and love the story of ‘The blueeyed pussy’ who went to find the land with many mice. Egon Mathiesen (1907-76) was an author and a painter who was, at the same time, fascinated by children and education. As opposed to the norms of the times, Egon Mathiesen wrote at a child’s-eye level. His books are characterized by a humanistic faith, without becoming too didactic, that mankind can learn to live in tolerance and solidarity with the weak. Mathiesen wrote and painted from and with pleasure and with an elegant union of language and color rhythm. He was an enthusiast of jazz music, movement, rhythm, and color tone. This was particularly expressed in his freewheeling ‘Blue Man’ from 1956, which is almost pure jazz through and through in its text and pictures. One of Mathiesen’s most beloved children’s books is ‘Fredrik with the Car’, which was published in
1944 while World War II was raging. It is a poetic story, full of hope for greater fellowship between human beings, regardless of whether their color is black, red or white. We are a part of the same palette, as Mathiesen shows so well with his illustrations. The characteristic thing about Mathiesen’s illustrations is his precision – his courage to let the paper’s white surface grow a universe with simple, clear strokes of color. Perhaps, most beautifully in his story, ‘Oswald, the Monkey’, published in 1947 – about the courage to stand up to dominance and tyranny. It looks very simple, but it actually required many studies at the Zoo for Mathiesen to become free enough with his strokes to give Oswald his intense personality. In’ The Parrot Book’ from 1960, the child reader gets a delightful explosion of color, when the parrot spreads its wings. It is done simply and without artifice, also linguistically, and that is why, even today,
Egon Mathiesen Aben Osvald og andre historier / Oswald, The Monkey and Many more Gyldendal 2011, 195 pp. Foreign Rights Gyldendal Group Agency Louise Langhoff +45 33 75 55 12 Louise_langhoff_koch@ gyldendalgroupagency.dk Previous titles published in Faroe Islands, France, Germany, Japan, Korea, Norway, Russia, Sweden
Egon Mathiesen’s children’s books are still relevant and belong in a master class.
| CHILDRENS BOOKS |
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Recently sold Danish Fiction Sold Abroad March 2011 - September 2011
Replika: Øivind Kyrø Manden der reddede verden Swiat Ksiazki: Mikkel Birkegaard Over mit lig
Portugal Bulgaria
Eucleia: Erling Jepsen Kunsten at græde i kor
Roboread: Helle Helle Ned til hundene Roboread: Thorstein Thomsen Den der hvisker lyver
Romania
Estland
Polirum: Mikkel Birkegaard Over mit lig Universe Publishing: Peter Høeg Frøken Smillas fornemmelse for sne
Eesti Raamat: Peter Høeg Elefantpassernes børn
Russia Finland Like: Jonas T. Bengtsson Et eventyr WSOY: Henrik Andersen Beskyttelseszonen
Azbooka Atticus: Carsten Jensen Vi, de druknede MIC: Ida Jessen Børnene
Spain France Denoël: Jonas T. Bengtsson Et eventyr Gaïa: Angelique Umugwaneza & Peder Fuglsang Rwandas børn Serpent a plumes: Helle Helle Dette burde skrives i nutid
ALBA: Lars Husum Mit venskab for Jesus Kristus Bromera (Catalonia): Mikkel Birkegaard Over mit lig Santillana: Mikkel Birkegaard Over mit lig Visor Libros: Henrik Nordbrandt Fralandsvind, Pjaltefisk & Besøgstid
Germany
Serbia
Goldmann Verlag: Therese Philipsen Fortidens synder Insel/Suhrkamp: Anne Lise Marstrand-Jørgensen Hildegaard II Random House: Mikkel Birkegaard Over mit lig Random House: Leonora Christina Skov Silhuet af en synder Suhrkamp: Erling Jepsen Hovedløs sommer Ullstein Verlag: Bødker & Bruun Blod vil have blod
Albatros Plus Publishers: Christina Hesselholdt Camilla og resten af selskabet Direkcija NNK International: Birgithe Kosovic Det dobbelte land Plato Books: Peter Høeg Elefantpassernes børn Plato Books: Peter Høeg Frøken Smillas fornemmelse for sne
Sweden Iceland Forlagid: Kaaberbøl & Friis Nattergalens død
Italy Baldini via Pontas: Christian Dorph og Simon Pasternak Jeg er ikke her Baldini via Pontas: Christian Dorph og Simon Pasternak Om et øjeblik i himmelen Iperborea: Svend Åge Madsen Genspejlet Lantana: Gretelise Holm Møgkællinger Newton Compton: Steffen Jacobsen Når de døde vågner Scritturapura: Merete Pryds Helle Hej Menneske Sonzogno: Anne Lise Marstrand-Jørgensen Hildegaard II
Norway Aschehoug: Peter Høeg Kvinden og aben Cappelen Damm: Mikkel Birkegaard Over mit lig Gyldendal: Kirsten Hammann Se på mig Gyldendal: Jonas T. Bengtsson Et eventyr Oktober: Helle Helle Dette burde skrives i nutid Piratförlaget: Hanne-Vibeke Holst Undskyldningen Vigmostad & Bjørke: Bødker & Bruun Blod vil have blod Vigmostad & Bjørke: Bødker & Bruun Før du lukker dine øjne Vigmostad & Bjørke: Silvia Henriksdottir Sig at du lyver
Kabusa Böcker: Pia Juul Radioteatret Lindelöw: Helle Helle Ned til hundene Modernista: Inger Christensen Lys Modernista: Inger Christensen Del af labyrinten Nordstedts: Helle Helle Dette burde skrives i nutid Nordstedts: Suzanne Brøgger Jeg har set den gamle verden forsvinde
Switzerland Dörlemann: Helle Helle Forestillingen om et ukompliceret liv med en mand
The Netherlands Cossée: Erling Jepsen Hovedløs sommer Mynx: Mikkel Birkegaard Over mit lig Uitgeverij Grote Letter Bibliotheek B.V: Jette A. Kaarsbøl Din næstes hus
Taiwan Business Weekly Publications via Grayhawk Agency: Peter Høeg Frøken Smillas fornemmelse for sne
United Kingdom Harvill Secker: Peter Høeg Elefantpassernes børn Transworld: Mikkel Birkegaard Over mit lig Soho Press: Kaaberbøl & Friis Nina Borg-series
Poland
USA
Amber: A J Kazinski Den sidste gode mand Czarne: Jonas T. Bengtsson Et eventyr
Amazon: Jette A. Kaarsbøl Din næstes hus Other Press: Peter Høeg Elefantpassernes børn
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Brasil
Hanser Verlag: Louis Jensen 2 kr. og 25 øre Klett Kinderbuch: Daniel Zimakoff Isbilen – De 3 måske 4. 1 Klett Kinderbuch: Daniel Zimakoff To fruer med et smæk – De 3 måske 4. 2 Lappan Verlag: Søren Thomas Børnebanden 3 Mixtvision: Kim Fupz Aakeson & Kamilla Slocinska Paradis Urachhaus: Bodil Bredsdorff Kaptajnen i blommetræet
The Record Publishing Group: Martin Jensen Edbryder The Record Publishing Group: Martin Jensen Kongens hund
Hungary
Danish Non-Fiction Books Sold Abroad March 2011 - September 2011
Scolar Kiadó: Janne Teller Intet
Catalonia Herder: Jesper Juul Kunsten at sige nej
Italy
Dutch
Feltrinelli: Janne Teller Hvis der var krig i norden Feltrinelli: Janne Teller Intet
KNNV: Jens Overgaard Christensen Gyldendals fuglebog
Japan France
Gentosha: Janne Teller Intet
Delachaux et Niestlé: Bent J. Muus et al. Havfisk & Fiskeri Delachaux et Niestlé: Bent J. Muus and Preben Dahlstrøm Ferskvandsfisk
Korea Borim Press: Leif Esper Andersen Heksefeber Huyn Books: Ida Jessen & Hanne Bartholin Carl
Germany Delius Klasing: Lars Steen Pedersen/Bjarne Riis Riis Delius Klasing: Jakob Andersen Ferrari Eulenspiegel Verlag: Jacob Wendt Jensen Ove Sprogøe BusseS-Frechverlag: Dorrit Elmquist and Birgitta Wolfgang Nordliv
Italy Feltrinelli: Jesper Juul Kunsten at sige nej
Norway Akribe: Kari Martinsen Løgstrup og sygeplejen
Poland Mind Dariusz Syska: Jesper Juul Smil vi skal spise
United Kingdom Vision Sports: Lars Steen Pedersen/Bjarne Riis Riis OUP: Preben Bang Dyrespor
Latvia Jumava: Peter Madsen og Sissel Bøe Troldeliv (3-4)
Norway CappelenDam: Rebecca Bach-Lauritsen Veronika lyder som harmonika Front Forlag: Jesper Christensen Ronin nr. 2 Front Forlag: Jim Lyngvild Nordisk mytologi Front Forlag: Jim Lyngvild Skyggernes bog Front Forlag: Jim Lyngvild Alfemod og ulveblod Front Forlag: Jim Lyngvild Epos og enhjørningen Front Forlag: Peter Gotthardt Elverdronningens børn 3-4 Front Forlag: Peter Gotthardt Max og Mille-series Gyldendal: Kim Fupz Aakeson & Eva Eriksson Søndag Mangschou: Søren Thomas Børnebanden 3 Stabelfelt: Mette Finderup Emmy 1-3 Urachhaus: Bodil Bredsdorff Kaptajnen i blommetræet
Russia Azbooka-Atticus: Peter Madsen og Sissel Bøe Troldeliv 1-6
Danish Children’s Books Sold Abroad
Spain
March 2011 - September 2011
Alberdania (Basque): Janne Teller Intet Seix Barral (Basque): Janne Teller Hvis der var krig i norden
Brasil
Sweden
Edelbra Grafica Ltda: Louis Jensen & Otto Dickmeiss Rejsen til gud Galera Record: Janne Teller Intet
France
Berghs forlag: Ida-Marie Rendtorff Dødebjerget (Dalia Dragehvisker 4) Ekholm og Tegebjerg: Peter Madsen Valhalla Samlebind 1 – 2 Nypon: Keld Petersen Gådebøgerne Nypon: Mette Vedsø Kærlighedskødboller Opal: Bodil El Jørgensen Esme & Igor 2. De tavse børn Opal: Mette Finderup Blink Opal: Kim Fupz Aakeson & Eva Eriksson Søndag
Grandes Personnes: Janne Teller Hvis der var krig i norden Grandes Personnes: Janne Teller Intet
South Korea
Faroe Islands Bokadeild Færya: Mette Egelund Olsen Mor får en kæreste
Germany Bastai Lübbe Verlag: Sanne Søndergaard Kære dødsbog Bi-media: Bjarne Reuter Prins Faisals ring DTV: Kim Fupz Aakeson Gerningsmænd Franck-Kosmos Verlag: Various authors Genstart-series Hanser Verlag: Janne Teller Hvis der var krig i norden Hanser Verlag: Lene Kaaberbøl Vildheks 1 – 3
Blue Wing Publishing: Katrine Marie Guldager En samling historier om Frøken Ignora BookIn Fish: Katrine Marie Guldager Lone og Nynne og dem der lyver
Turkey Beyaz Ballina: Jan Kjær Kong Neo’s løver
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Photo: Robin Skjoldborg
Lotte & Søren Hammer Ensomme hjerters klub / Lonely Heats Club Gyldendal 2011, 416 pp. Foreign Rights Gyldendal Group Agency Sofie Voller Phone: + 45 33 75 55 55 sofie_voller@gyldendal.dk Previous titles published in The Netherlands, Finland, France, Iceland, Italy, Norway, Spain
Lotte og Søren Hammer Crime novel thematise collective and individual memory By Lars Ole Sauerberg When the police procedural emerged decades ago readers welcomed a more realistic take on crime and crime detection. A recent development in the genre is to introduce even more realism in the form of police investigators prey to all kinds of illness not due to wounds and other damage incurred in the line of duty. Chief Inspector Konrad Simonsen is recovering after a heart attack. While watching with jealousy his former subordinate in charge of the investigation of a brutal school killing in central Copenhagen, he is told to put the lid on an old case requested re-opened by a member of the Danish parliament. Routine work and a piece of cake, apparently, that is, until one of the intended victims of the school killing surprisingly appears in the routine case. Konrad Simonsen refuses to be held back by health
considerations and starts digging with his team, both figuratively and literally. It turns out that something happened when the Beatles sang about the Lonely Hearts Club which has long since been buried, in minds as well as the ground. There is a link from the motivation behind the school killing and Konrad Simonsen’s not so much of a routine case after all, in the form of peer-group bullying now and then. The parallel causes Konrad Simonsen to recall his early years as a cadet in the police force called out to control the crowds that demonstrated in Copenhagen against the Vietnam War, which runs as an accompanying and conscience-probing strain in the narrative. Lotte and Søren Hammer’s third book looks deeply into the collective national as well as the individual memories, forcing to confrontations with what time and convenience has left, as it appears, not so safely in the past.
| CRIME |
Photo: Camilla Stephan
Morten Hesseldahl
Morten Hesseldahl Blodet fra Solsortesletten / The Blood from the Plain of the Blackbirds Modtryk 2011, 279 pp. Foreign Rights Leonhardt & Høier Anneli Høier Phone: +45 33 13 25 23 anneli@leonhardt-hoier.dk Previous titles published in France, Norway
| CRIME |
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An international political thriller about destructive and tragic events in the Balkans By Lars Ole Sauerberg The international political thriller, as the designations indicates, presupposes relations between at least two countries or regions. In the case of Morten Hesseldahl’s third novel of this kind, the two locations are Denmark and the Balkans, more specifically Serbia. When entering a flat in inner Copenhagen, a thief, Thomas, finds a man chained to an explosive device. The thief, who spontaneously offers the unfortunate man, a Serbian refugee, hospitality, is a talented but out-of-work designer of graphic novels, who pursues the dubious career of housebreaking according to a Robin Hood principle. Somewhere else in Copenhagen a senior university lecturer in Balkan Studies is assisted by Iben, who graduated from the same high school in the Danish province as Thomas a dozen years ago, and who,
like him, has been unable to settle with anything approaching permanency. Thomas and Iben have been out of touch since their school days, but are now brought together by the presence of the Serbian and the nature of the elderly lecturer’s work, which is not as academically impartial and objective as might be expected. Actually, since his post-graduate work on the spot in Serbia he has been driven by a firm belief in Serbian nationalism. Secret preparations, with the lecturer in a central role, are being made for a Serbian demonstration of power on the Plain of the Blackbirds, the traditional rallying point for patriots of the region. At the same time a scheme of personal vengeance concerning the mysterious Serbian found by Thomas proves to be on collision course. Morten Hessedahl’s thriller is an international political thriller turning destructive and tragic events in the Balkans into a suspenseful fictional narrative as well as a study of fanatic patriotism running amok.
Danish post-colonial conscience examination in the form of narrative fiction By Lars Ole Sauerberg The legacy of the Danish colonization of Greenland reached an international reading – and later cinema – audience with Peter Høeg’s ‘Miss Smilla’s Feelings for Snow’ in 1992. Hans Jakob Helms, educated in Denmark, but born, growing up, and working in and for Greenland, has put a lifetime of arctic experience into Hvis du fløjter efter nordlyset (’When You Whistle at the Northern Light’), a rare specimen of Danish post-colonial conscience examination in the form of narrative fiction. The story is shaped round the personal history of Bjørn, a Danish journalist of radical bent, but who has now been working quietly for almost twenty years in Alaska as a radio news reporter. Why he ended up there dawns on the reader as Bjørn discloses an account of his life, only missing the final chapter, to his 18-year-old daughter. Framing the account of the chronological progression are current events that simultaneously threaten to put the Bjørn out of his job, come to terms with an unpleasant diagnosis, making up with the family left more than twenty years ago in Denmark, and, not least, tell his daughter about the circumstances of a repressed trauma recently re-emerging. The story puts its focus on the events at the time of the early 1980s, when Greenland voted to overrule DanishEuropean relations and leave the European community. Through Bjørn’s eyes the reader witnesses the darker sides of local arctic entrepreneurial and commercial initiatives in Greenland, Canada and the USA, in more or less healthy cooperation with political forces. Helms’s novel is based on solid knowledge of the arctic region. Though expressing a strong affection for Greenland especially, the narrative showcases critically and mercilessly both doubtful political maneuvers and general human shortcomings and vices.
Hans Jakob Helms Hvis du fløjter efter nordlyset / When You Whistle at the Northern Light Milik 2011, 300 pp. Foreign Rights Milik Publishers Lene Therkildsen Phone: +299 32 26 02 milik@greennet.gl
Photo: Thomas A.
Hans Jakob Helms
Steffen Jacobsen Når de døde vågner / When the Dead Awaken C&K Forlag 2011, 350 pp. Foreign Rights ILA Literary Agency ila@ila-agency.co.uk Previous titles published in Germany, Italy, Norway
| CRIME |
Steffen Jacobsen Thrill and corruption in Italy By Lars Ole Sauerberg It is rare for a novelist to completely sever his roots in a familiar country and compose a story set completely abroad. This is what the Danish orthopedic surgeon Steffen Jacobsen successfully does in his third thriller, set in Italy. As a crane cable breaks during the loading a ship in Naples, a container crashes and discloses not only the plastic-wrapped corpses of illegal workers destined for a discreet burial at sea, but also the remnants of Italian citizens reported missing. The unpleasant findings start a race between the criminal organization the Camorra and the Italian authorities. Sabrina D’Avalos, a young, brilliantly gifted and goodlooking vice-district-attorney and last scion of old Italian nobility, is trusted with the case of linking the dead and maimed bodies to a series of killings a few years earlier, which also included her own father, a zealous anti-mafia high-ranking police officer. A link between the illegal workers, the dead Italians, and her own father is the fashion industry centered on Milan. As it turns out, the objects of the Camorra anger is a small syndicate of designers and scientists who seem to have found a solution for the problem of protecting original design products from illegally fabricated copies. With such a copy the whole Camorra-controlled copy industry will come to a halt and a considerable source of income will run dry. As Sabrina, who might be a not so distant cousin of Swedish Stieg Larsson’s Lisbeth Salander, closes in on her prey, the situation becomes unbearably tense, and the costs of fighting organized Italian crime prove considerable.
Photo:Ole G. Jensen
| CRIME |
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Janina Katz By Lilian Munk Rösing , translated by Charlotte Barslund Janina Katz was born in Poland, but is now a highly respected author in Danish. She has recently written her first poetry anthology in Polish, but has also published it in her own Danish translation. The result is forty remarkably dense poems, as saturated with pain and anger they are with humour and tenderness, densely allegorical while still retaining a whimsical touch, as weighty as they are light-hearted. The anthology is powerfully framed by two poems “Dengang (1)” (‘Back Then (1)’) and “Dengang (2)” (‘Back Then (2)’) where the lyric ‘I’ portrays herself as “little Eurydice,” a child “torn out of hell” and “sitting under a young apple tree / mocked by the war.” As a child Janina Katz was herself torn from the Holocaust hell where her parents perished and her poems are written from a position where she is and continues to be “mocked by the war.” There is very little divine intervention in the universe of her poems; we live in an age where the world ends over and over (“behind the window / the end of the world celebrates / yet another birthday”) and where the sun quite frankly is fed up with the Earth (“I wish that old whore / would stop circling me”). The poems are filled with ashes, losses, of negations and of allegories (Eurydice, the war, the sun, the lady with the unicorn). They are about death (the mother, the father, God) and everything that never was: “unborn children’s unburied ashes”, “my non-wedding”, “an unshaken hand,” “poems, that don’t exist”. But there is also a promised land, manifested in the shape of Israel, conjured up in travel poems with mythical and Biblical references and more fleeting and abstract in the snippets of girlfriends chatter, the beauty of art and the tenderness of lovers that light up the grey ashes. In one poem “the heart’s woodpecker taps out the Kaddish prayer.” The Kaddish prayer is a Jewish prayer which is both an elegy (mourning the dead) and a eulogy (gratitude for their lives). Katz’ poetry can be read simultaneously as an elegy and a eulogy, both for what was, for what never happened, and for what exists in spite of everything. Janina Katz Skrevet på polsk / Written in Polish Rosinante 2011, 54 pp. Foreign Rights Gyldendal Group Agency Jenny Thor Phone: +45 33 75 57 48 jenny_thor@ gyldendalgroupagency.dk Previous titles published in Poland
| POETRY |
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Photo: Morten Holtum
Poems haunted by mythologized holocaust
Nikolaj Stochholm Odefabrikanten / The Ode Manufacturer Gyldendal 2011, 58 pp. Foreign Rights Gyldendal Group Agency Sofie Voller Phone: + 45 33 75 55 55 sofie_voller@gyldendal.dk
| POETRY |
Nikolaj Stochholm Traditional and completely new By Thomas Bredsdorff, translated by Glyn Jones Nicolaj Stochholm belongs to a long tradition extending from Romanticism through Eliot and his ilk into early Modernism. A tradition in which poets abandon accepted syntax and sense impressions in order to penetrate into a divided but both timeless and individual ego that is ”stretched out between four horses / each making for its own corner of the world”, a situation which, as is only reasonable, casts at least four shadows. We are in no doubt that we are here faced with a poet, even when the codes are so private that they cannot be broken by strangers. It is the language that convinces us of the quality. Even in the less successful poems there is rarely a cliché, but almost always a clear determination to find an original expression. It is not an empty phrase when he maintains in one poem that “analogy is dead” and “mimesis used up”. He wants to get beyond both metaphor and reflected reality. Take one of the more easily understood verses: “I have walked a hole / in myself, a clearing / storms through me”. “You can’t say” that sort of thing, but when it is said, it is poetry. What happens to the poet who has had a hole worn in him in this way? - “I’m as trembling / as the unremembering”. Again, remarkable language in both senses of the word: strange and noteworthy. One of the many poems about writing poetry contains the words, “As though we are driven to bear / a developer with which / heaven makes never a picture”. That developer can be felt in Stochholm’s language throughout, even where neither heaven nor the reader can make pictures of it.
Top 10 Best selling Danish books, March to August 2011
Fiction Helle, Helle Dette burde skrives i nutid | Rosinante & Co. Thomsen, Søren Ulrik Rystet spejl | Gyldendal Davidsen, Leif Utahs bjerge og andre historier | Lindhardt og Ringhof Thorup, Kirsten Tilfældets gud | Gyldendal Høeg, Peter Elefantpassernes børn | Rosinante & Co. Marstrand-Jørgensen, Anne Lise Hildegard; Bind 2 | Gyldendal Hørslev, Lone Sorg og camping | C&K Forlag Helleberg, Maria Kamma | Rosinante & Co. Plambeck, Dy Gudfar | Gyldendal Brask, Morten William Sidis´ perfekte liv | JP/Politikens Hus Egholm, Elsebeth Tre hundes nat | JP/Politikens Hus Adler-Olsen, Jussi Journal 64; Afdeling Q; Bind 4 | JP/Politikens Hus Davidsen, Leif Min broders vogter | Lindhardt og Ringhof Blædel, Sara Dødsenglen | People´s Press Kazinski, A.J. Den sidste gode mand | JP/Politikens Hus Bech Hansen, Hanne Lasten | Lindhardt og Ringhof Kaaberbøl, Lene Kadaverdoktoren | Modtryk Hammer, Lotte & Hammer, Søren Ensomme hjerters klub | Gyldendal Vincentz, Helle Den afrikanske jomfru | Rosinante & Co. Wolf, Inger Hvepsereden; Serien om Lisa Kornelius og Daniel Trokic; 4. bind | Modtryk
Crime
Childrens Books
Rasmussen, Halfdan Lange Peter Madsen Nyt Nordisk Forlag Kaaberbøl, Lene Viridians blod; Vildheks; 2 Alvilda Andersen, H. C. Samlede eventyr og historier med CD Rød Rosinante & Co. Kirkegaard, Ole Lund Orla Frøsnapper Gyldendal Wegloop, Mette Vainer & Spliid, Lone Ej sikke leg JP/Politikens Hus Bøgh Andersen, Kenneth Djævelens lærling; Den store djævlekrig; 1 Rosinante & Co. Aakeson, Kim Fupz & Lindgren, Astrid & K Sjove og frække historier for piger og drenge Gyldendal Rasmussen, Halfdan Halfdans abc Lindhardt og Ringhof Kaaberbøl, Lene Vildheks - Ildprøven; Vildheks; 1 Alvilda Bøgh Andersen, Kenneth Dødens terning; Den store djævlekrig; 2 Rosinante & Co Bøgh Andersen, Kenneth Den forkerte død; Den store Djævlekrig; 3 Rosinante & Co.
Non-Fiction Meyer, Claus & Holm, Marie & Skytte, Nic Meyers bageri | Lindhardt og Ringhof Bastian, Peter Mesterlære | Gyldendal Andersen, Stig Tøger | People´s Press MacDonald, Chris Du er ikke alene | Turbulenz Buk-Swienty, Tom Dommedag Als | Gyldendal Nørby, Ghita & Thim, Torben Ghitas roser | Lindhardt og Ringhof Bitsch, Mikael & Lange, Søren & Skaarup, Det helbredende køkken | JP/Politikens Hus Nielsson, Arne & Lellek, Bjarne & Løfber | Viljen til sejr 2 People´s Press Price, Adam & Price, James Spise med Price | DR Multimedie The lists are based on data provided by BookScan.dk. Ladegaard Erichsen, Frank Det enkle liv | Gyldendal (Statistics for books with a recommended price higher than 10 Dkk) www.bookscan.dk
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The Danish Arts Council’s Committee for Literature
The Danish Arts Council’s Committee for Literature works to promote familiarity with Danish literature at home and abroad and helps facilitate literary exchange projects between Denmark and other countries.
Promotion grants The fund is open to foreign publishers publishing Danish literature outside of Denmark, organizers of literary events and libraries. There are four annual application deadlines.
International research programme
Support schemes Translation Fund Support is provided to foreign publishing houses that publish works translated from Danish. Support is provided to works of fiction, general works of non-fiction, comics/graphic novels, and children’s literature translated by professional translators. There are four annual application deadlines.
Nordic translation Fund: inter-Nordic translations Support may only be sought for the translation of works from Danish. Support for translations into Danish must be sought from within the country in which the respective work was originally published. The funds for Nordic translations are distributed on behalf of the Art and Culture Program of Nordic Culture Point under the Nordic Council of Ministers. There are four annual application deadlines.
Support may be provided to foreign publisher, heads of festivals and the like who wants to acquire an insight into contemporary Danish literature and visit the Danish publishers, festivals ect., to strengthen network and dialogue between the Danish and international literary partners. There is no application deadline, and applications will be processed as quickly as practicable.
General funds Normally, support is only provided for events, publications, and seminars in Denmark. In exceptional cases, however, the Danish Arts Council’s Committee for Literature may subsidize the publication abroad of Danish works in translation and events, that have a special focus on Danish literature. There are two annual application deadlines
Application guidelines, deadlines and electronic application forms may be obtained at www.danisharts.dk
Sample translation fund Foreign translators, theatres, and publishers may apply for support to finance sample translations of Danish literature. There is no application deadline, and applications will be processed as quickly as practicable.
Travel grants for translators Professional translators may apply for travel grants in connection with specific translation projects as well as for supplemental linguistic and cultural training. There are four annual application deadlines.
Literary exchange fund Support may be provided to defray travel and hotel expenses in connection with a Danish author’s participation in literary festivals, readings and publication events abroad, if there is a formal invitation. Support may be provided to foreign authors travelling to Denmark on the same conditions. In addition, foreign translators of Danish literature may apply for support to defray travel expenses in connection with shorter stays in Denmark. There is no application deadline, and applications will be processed as quickly as practicable.
16 WWW.DANISHLITERARYMAGAZINE.DK
The Danish Arts Council’s Committee for Literature H.C. Andersens Boulevard 2 DK-1553 Copenhagen V Denmark litteratur@kunst.dk +45 3374 4500
Danish organizations
Contact and information
The Danish Writers Association
The Danish Arts Council’s Committee for Literature H.C. Andersens Boulevard 2 DK-1553 Copenhagen V Denmark
is Denmark’s oldest professional association for writers and translators. It was founded in 1894 and has approx. 1400 members. The association also includes the Danish Translators Association. www.danskforfatterforening.dk Telephone: +45 32 95 51 00
Danish Writers of Fiction and Poetry was founded in 1991 and has approx. 200 members www.daskforf.dk Telephone: +45 35 43 16 60
E-mail: literature@kunst.dk Telephone: +45 33 74 45 45 Fax: +45 33 74 45 45 For more information on the Danish Arts Council’s Committee for Literature, go to www.danisharts.dk
The Danish Playwrights’ and Screenwriters’ Guild,
(founded in 1906) is an association for theater, radio, television and film scriptwriters. It has approx. 270 members. www.dramatiker.dk Telephone: +45 33 45 40 35
The Danish Publishers Association (founded in 1837) is a trade association for individuals and firms involved in the publishing industry. The association has approx. 60 members and accounts for approx. 2/3 of the overall turnover from Danish publications, including multimedia. www.danskeforlag.dk Telephone: +45 33 15 66 88
The Danish Booksellers Association is a trade association for Danish booksellers. The association has approx. 380 members and represents 90% of all Danish booksellers. www.boghandlerforeningen.dk Telephone: +45 32 54 22 55
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Published Titles
January 2011 – September 2011
Fiction Arabic
Italian
Arab Scientific Publishers, Inc: Hav, Niels Når jeg bliver blind (Danish title)
A.W. Bruna Uitgevers B.V.: Hammer, Lotte & Søren Misbruik A.W. Bruna Uitgevers B.V.: Hammer, Lotte & Søren Wraak De Geus: Kazinski, A.J. De laatste goede man Uitgeverij Clavis: Finderup, Mette Shortcuts
Baldini Castoldi Dalai editore S.p.A: Dorph, Christian & Pasternak, Simon L’orlo dell’ abisso. Edistudio: Oehlenschläger, Adam Poesie 1803 Iperborea: Jensen, Flemming Il blues del rapinatore Longanesi: Kazinski, A.J. La ultimo uomo bueno Sonzogno di Marsilio Editori: Marstrand-Jørgensen, Anne Lise La guaritrice
English
Norwegian
BookThug: Frank, Niels Picture world Houghton Mifflin Harcourt: Jensen, Carsten We, the Drowned Maclehose Press: Ejersbo, Jakob Exile New Directions Publishing Corporation: Christensen, Inger Light, Grass and Letter in April
Aschehoug: Høeg, Peter Elefantpassernes barn Bokforlaget AS: Høvsgaard, Jens Den syvende dagen Font Forlag: Hammer, Lotte & Søren Demonen som gråt
Dutch
Finnish
Polish Swiat Ksiazki: Birkegaard, Mikkel Biblioteka cieni Biblioteka Slaska: Katz, Janina Powrót do jablek
Bazar Kustannus Oy: Hammer, Lotte & Søren Saastat
Russian French Le Serpent à plumes: Helle, Helle Chienne de vie Les editions Circe: Christensen, Inger Azorno
Ripol Classic Publishing Group: Birkegaard, Mikkel Over mit lig (Danish title) Symposium: Ramsland, Morten Hundehoved (Danish title)
German
Spanish
Heyne Verlag: Krefeld, Michael Katz Die Geisel Kiepenheuer & Witsch: Grøndahl, Jens Christian Vier Tage im März Mare Verlag GmbH & Co. oHG: Leine, Kim Die Untreue der Grönländer Unionsverlag: Riel, Jørn Arluks grosse Reise
Roca Editorial de Libros, S.L.: Hammer, Lotte & Søren El lado oscuro
Hungarian Polar Könyvek: Grøndahl, Jens Christian Piazza Bucharest
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Swedish Albert Bonniers Förlag: Gazan, Sissel-Jo Dinosauriens fjädrar Kabusa Böcker: Hesselholdt, Christina Camilla and the horse
Children’s Literature
Non-Fiction
Faroese
Dutch
Bókadeild Føroya Lærarafelags: Dürr, Morten Metbókin hjá Rúnu Bókadeild Føroya Lærarafelags: Kjær, Jan Mannajagstrarin (Bók 2 av 3: Ongar reglur) Bókadeild Føroya Lærarafelags: Strid, Jakob Martin Mimbo Jimbo Bókadeild Føroya Lærarafelags: Strid, Jakob Martin Mimbo Jimbo stuttleikar sær
Maven Publishing B.V.: Frank, Lone Mijn super genen
English Praesens Verlag: Andersen, Hans Christian Shadow Pictures
Italian Quodlibet Srl: Rasmussen, Knud Il grande viaggio in slitta
Swedish German
Akvilon: Rasmussen, Karl Aage Svjatoslav Richter, Pianist
Picus Verlag Wien: Dürr, Morten Lass Samiras Hand nicht los
Greek Patakis Publishers: Bødker, Benni Nattens børn - Blodet er liv (Danish title) Patakis Publishers: Bødker, Benni Nattens Børn - Vampyrfesten (Danish title)
Latvian Jumava: Bøe, Sissel Trolli. Pedas sniega
Norwegian Aschehoug: Guldager, Katrine Marie Lone og Nynne og de som lyver Engelstad Forlag: Strid, Jakob Martin Mimbo Jimbo har det gøy Front Forlag: Gotthardt, Peter Alvedronningens riddere 1-8 Front Forlag: Gotthardt, Peter Det forheskede slott 1-10 Schibsted: Kjær, Jan Menneskejegeren 1-3 Cappelen Damm: Harild, Kirsten Sonne Ponni og gjengen (1-3)
Spanish Seix Barral: Teller, Janne Nada
Swedish Bokförlaget Opal: El Jørgensen, Bodil Esme och igor. Tredje timmen efter midnatt
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