DANISH LITERARY MAGAZINE
Den stjålne vej (The Stolen Road), Politikens Forlag 2012, 320 pp. Foreign Rights: Politikens Forlag, Nya Guldberg, nya-guldberg@jppol.dk
Jakob Martin Strid’s Den utrolige historie om den kæmpestore pære (The Incredible Story of the Enormous Pear) has been warmly received by readers and critics alike. In words and wonderful pictures this tells the story of two friends who find a seed that grows overnight
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into an enormous pear. Even before the ink was dry on the illustrations this book had been snapped up by several international publishers and since then Jakob Martin Strid (born 1972) has been awarded the Danish Crown Prince and Princess’s Award for his work as a children’s writer, a career that got off to a flying start in 1999 with the publication of Mustafa’s kiosk (Mustapha’s Kiosk). In their motivation of the award the Crown Prince and Princess cited, among other things, the unique quality of Jakob Martin Strid’s work, its humour and relevance and the “quirky and easily recognisable style that constitutes the essence of the colourful stories we know from Mustapha’s Kiosk, Lille frø (Little Seed), Min mormor’s gebis (My Grandma’s False Teeth) and – this year – Den utrolige historie om den kæmpestore pære (The Incredible Story of the Enormous Pear). With his subtle eye for the key topics of our times he succeeds in combining wisdom with an occasionally reckless, but always gentle wit.” Den utrolige historie om den kæmpestore pære (The Incredible Story of the Enormous Pear), Gyldendal 2012, 99 pp. Previous titles sold to: China, Faroe Islands, Finland, France, Germany, Hungary, Iceland, Israel, Italy, Korea, the Netherlands, Norway, Rusland, Sweden, United Kingdom. Foreign Rights: Gyldendal Group Agency, Louise Langhoff Koch, louise_ langhoff_koch@gyldendalgroupagency.dk
“A huge step forward for Danish poetry” – this was just one of many compliments paid to Ursula Andkjær Olsen’s seventh collection of poetry, Det 3. årtusindes hjerte (The Heart of the 3rd Millenium), for which she was awarded this year’s Montana Prize for Literature. This collection has been hailed as a new departure in Olsen’s writing. Here, in stringent, monumental form, she reworks painful experiences of separation and union and introduces them into a sphere that is as political as it is human. You are in me as I am all the world, fruit of the garden. And warmth, protection, food and transport So we must be parted before we can meet, we are as one, and so must come apart. That we may meet. I am all you are, I am warmth, protection, food
Photo: Rolando Diaz
Crown Prince and Princess’s Award to children’s book – Jakob Martin Strid
Poet receives Montana Prize – Ursula Andkjær Olsen
Photo: Morten Holtum
Malika, a modern, well-educated woman who secretly teaches other women to read. On the home front she is struggling to come to terms with the fact that her husband has taken another wife – a girl of just thirteen who regularly meets Javeed, a boy from the street who has been raped by a policeman and whom Malika sets out to help. Anne-Cathrine Riebnitzsky (born 1974), is a graduate from the Danish Writers’ School, but she is also a Russian language officer with the Danish Army who worked at the Danish embassy in Moscow before being sent to Afghanistan, first as a soldier and later as an advisor to the Danish Ministry of Foreign Affairs. She has previously written a work of non-fiction entitled Kvindernes krig (The Women’s War) about the lives of women in Afghanistan. In 2011 the First Novel Prize was awarded to Erik Valeur for his crime novel Det Syvende Barn (The Seventh Child).