Copenhagen

by Katrine Marie Guldager, P.K. Brask (Translator)

Copenhagen is a collection of 11 short stories that map the city of K?benhavn through their own subtle intertextuality. Each story is takes place in a different location within the urban landscape, and these sites become part of a structural network through which its citizens move. Their lives brush 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 characters in these pages move about the city on foot, on bicycles, in buses and in cars, even across the book's shifting montage of consciousness from one story to another. They encounter one another in random fateful collisions: a car crash, a knife thrust, a cheerless sexual encounter. At first glance, these criss-crossing narratives might appear like moral criticism, yet such an outcome is continually thwarted for an exploration of the trails and byways of the text and the city, leading us to unexpected places and even to a place where a form of consciousness, both social and poetic, becomes the city and the text, both isolated and connected, both orchestrated and restless. Guldager's tales exude what was for Goethe the core of the short story: "the unheard-of event."

Genres: Short Stories, Scandinavian Literature

84 pages, Paperback

First published November 1, 2009

About the author

Katrine Marie Guldager (born 1966) has worked with poetry and prose and has proven herself in both genres to be a pioneering, form-shattering, poetic original. Guldager received a graduate-level degree in Danish from the University of Copenhagen in 1994 and made her debut that same year with her collection of poetry, Dagene skifter hænder (The Days Change Hands) . Guldager attended Forfatterskolen (The Danish Writers' School) in Copenhagen. She belongs to the '90s generation in Danish Literature and has become one of its most prominent and personal voices. In 1995, she published a collection of poetry entitled Styrt (Crash) which was translated into English in 1999. Guldager's latest book is a collection of short stories entitled København (Copenhagen)

Reviews

[Noah · Rating 3 out of 5]

quaint. only decent depiction of the city I've seen exist in English, but very passingly

[Emily · Rating 2 out of 5]

I was quite excited about "Copenhagen." In the end I didn't enjoy the majority of these stories. I've tried not to my lack of enjoyment reflect fully on the rating. These were what I'd probably call textbook short stories. They were very similar to the type of short stories assigned in school. My excitement had been that the stories were about Copenhagen and I didn't have to read Nordic Noir mysteries to be ensconced in Copenhagen. Yet, Guldager's stories didn't really scratch the itch in my memories for Copenhagen. These stories are very, uhm, "gritty" and generally could have taken place anywhere, except for "A Bench in Tivoli," which I think was the best of the lot. In any event, the whole book is short, so if you're curious give it a go. I'd certainly be curious to know what you think.