Fiction. Translated from the Danish by P.K. Brask. COPENHAGEN is a collection of eleven short stories that map the city of Kobenhavn through subtle intertextuality. Each story takes place in a different location within the urban landscape, and these sites become a network through which its citizens move, their lives brushing up against each other but without ever connecting. Parents neglect their children in the face of everyday chores; husbands cheat on their wives with little gratification; hit-and-run drivers go home and make tomato soup. The narratives lead the reader through a landscape where consciousness, both social and poetic, become the city and the text, isolated and connected, orchestrated and restless. Guldager's tales exude what was for Goethe the core of the short story: "the unheard-of event."
Author City: Amager DEN
Katrine Marie Guldager has proven herself in both poetry and fiction to be a pioneering, form-shattering, poetic original. Affiliated with the 90s generation of Danish Literature she quickly proved herself as one of its most prominent and personal voices. Guldager made her debut in 1994 with a collection of poetry, Dagene skifter aender (The Days Change Hands). In 1995, she published a collection of poetry entitled Styrt (Crash) which was translated into English in 1999. Kobenhavn (COPENHAGEN) is her first work of fiction.
Reviews and Other Links
http://www.guldager.gyldendal.dk/