The trouble with happiness

£9.99

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 love, marriage and family life in mid-century Copenhagen pulse currents of desire, violence and despair, as women and men dream of escaping their conventional roles and finding freedom and happiness – without ever truly understanding what that might mean.

Out of stock

Description

‘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

Additional information

Weight 0.147 kg
Dimensions 19.7 × 13 × 1 cm
Author

Publisher

Imprint

Cover

Paperback

Pages

192

Language

English

Edition

Short stories

Dewey

839.81372 (edition:23)

Readership

General – Trade / Code: K