'So clear is Ditlevsen's eye that it is impossible to tear yourself away' John Self, Guardian
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
- Women's History Month 2025
- Women Write Fiction
- New eBook additions
- Available now
- Most popular
- Childhood Classic eBooks
- Dyslexia
- Unmissable Picture Books
- Try something different
- Crime Doesn't Pay
- Novella & Short Story Classics
- Read-Along
- Out-of-this-world Sci-Fi
- See all
- Women's History Month 2025
- Women Write Fiction
- New audiobook additions
- Books on Film
- Try something different
- Available now
- Read by a Celeb
- Most popular
- New kids additions
- New teen additions
- Interesting Lives: Memoirs & Biographies
- Crime Doesn't Pay
- Popular Audiobooks
- See all