This month we will be reading
The Copenhagen Trilogy
Childhood, Youth, Dependency

By Tove Ditlevsen
Translated by Tiina Nunnally and Michael Favala Goldman
384 pp., Macmillan Publisher, 2021

“Tove Ditlevsen is today celebrated as one of the most important and unique voices in twentieth-century Danish literature, and The Copenhagen Trilogy (1969-71) is her acknowledged masterpiece. Childhood tells the story of a misfit child's single-minded determination to become a poet; Youth describes her early experiences of sex, work, and independence. Dependency picks up the story as the narrator embarks on the first of her four marriages and goes on to describe her horrible descent into drug addiction, enabled by her sinister, gaslighting doctor-husband.   ... Ditlevsen's trilogy is remarkable for its intensity and its immersive depiction of a world of complex female friendships, family and growing up--in this sense, it's Copenhagen's answer to Elena Ferrante's Neapolitan Novels. … Her trilogy is drawn from her own experiences but reads like the most compelling kind of fiction.” (Macmillan Publisher)

This acclaimed trilogy was called a masterpiece by the New York Times and one of their 10 Best Books of 2021.

We hope you will join us for a discussion of Ditlevsen’s remarkable memoirs, that are all finally available in English.

We will take a break in December. Our next meeting will be on Wednesday, January 18 to discuss Empire of Pain: The Secret History of the Sackler Dynasty, by Patrick Radden Keefe. This is narrative reporting at its best, giving us a devastating portrait of three generations and their endless greed that launched the U.S. opioid crisis.