The searing final volume in Ditlevsen's celebrated autobiographical trilogy - a major publication for Penguin Classics in 2019
Tove Ditlevsen was born in 1917 in a working-class neighbourhood in Copenhagen. Her first volume of poetry was published when she was in her early twenties, and was followed by many more books, including her three brilliant volumes of memoir, Childhood (1967), Youth (1967) and Dependency (1971). She married four times and struggled with alcohol and drug abuse throughout her adult life until her death by suicide in 1978.
Mordant, vibrantly confessional ... A masterpiece
*Guardian*
The best books I have read this year ... They act as a manifesto
for art, showing that literature is not the base metal: it is the
process of alchemy, and the gold that results
*New Statesman*
Semi-miraculous, raw and poignant ... Radiates the clear light of
truth and stands as the ultimate victory of a life that must have
felt, in the living of it, like a defeat
*Observer*
Dependency is the tour de force of the trilogy ... Some of the most
potent writing about addiction, rehab and relapse I've ever
read
*Daily Telegraph*
Ditlevsen's taut, simple prose shines a light on what life and love
were like for working-class women in 20th-century Copenhagen. Elena
Ferrante fans, take note
*Stylist*
Despite the darkness that haunts these three books, they shine with
Ditlevsen's honesty and humanity ... Her work, seemingly so simple,
has the miraculous quality of a life perceived in perfect clarity.
Despite the author's untimely death, The Copenhagen Trilogy is a
powerful - and uplifting - testament of survival
*Erica Wagner*
Incredibly compelling and timely
*Saturday Review*
As in much of the best autofiction, the protagonist's weakness is
counterpoised by the strength of her voice ... [Ditlevsen speaks]
beyond the cruel and disappointing figures she encounters to us,
her readers, awaiting her in another time and another place
*Guardian*
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