Tove is only twenty, but she's already famous, a published poet and wife of a much older literary editor. Her path in life seems set, but she has no idea of the struggles that lie ahead - love affairs, an unwanted pregnancy, physical pain and crippling opioid addiction. As the years go by, the central tension of Tove's life comes into painful focus: the terrible lure of dependency, in all its forms, and the possibility of living life freely and fearlessly - as an artist on her own terms. 
The final volume in Ditlvesen's autobiographical trilogy and perhaps her masterpiece, Dependency is a dark and blisteringly honest account of addiction, and the way out.

Dependency (Penguin Modern Classics)

Literature & Fiction

Ditlevsen, Tove

Literary

Penguin Classics

'One of Denmark's most celebrated writers' New StatesmanFrom the acclaimed author of the Copenhagen Trilogy, a searing, haunting novel of a woman on the edge, portrayed with all the vividness of lived experience. Copenhagen, 1968. Lise, a children's book writer and married mother of three, is increasingly haunted by disembodied faces and voices. She is convinced that her husband, already extravagantly unfaithful, will leave her. Most of all, she is scared that she will never write again. Yet as she descends into a world of pills and hospitals, she begins to wonder, is insanity really something to be feared, or does it bring a kind of freedom?'Ditlevsen explores the surprising contours of Lise's experience: from her point of view, madness can be funny, soft and secure, and far more enlightening than the "reality" it struggles to evade' The New York TimesTranslated by Tiina Nunnally

The Faces (Penguin Modern Classics)

Contemporary

Unable to stay on to high school, Tove starts her first job (which lasts only one day) and soon embarks on a varied and chequered career: as au pair, cleaner, stock-room assistant and office worker. But Tove is hungry, for poetry, for love, for real life to begin. As she navigates exploitative bosses, uninspiring boyfriends and a Nazi landlady, she struggles to keep her poetic vocation in sight - until she finally realizes the 'miracle' that she has always dreamed of.The second volume in Ditlvesen's autobiographical trilogy, Youth is a sensitive, often funny and almost painfully truthful portrayal of adolescence.

Youth (Penguin Modern Classics)

'Utterly, agonisingly compulsive ... a masterpiece' Liz Jensen, Guardian\nFollowing one woman's journey from a troubled girlhood in working-class Copenhagen through her struggle to live on her own terms, The Copenhagen Trilogy is a searingly honest, utterly immersive portrayal of love, friendship, art, ambition and the terrible lure of addiction, from one of Denmark's most celebrated twentieth-century writers.\n'Sharp, tough and tender ... wrenching sadness and pitch-black comedy ... Ditlevsen can pivot from hilarity to heartbreak in a trice' Boyd Tonkin Spectator\n'Astonishing, honest, entirely revealing and, in the end, devastating. Ditlevsen's trilogy is remarkable not only for its honesty and lyricism; these are books that journey deep into the darkest reaches of human experience and return, fatally wounded, but still eloquent' Observer\n'The best books I have read this year. These volumes slip in like a stiletto and do their work once inside. Thrilling' New Statesman

Childhood, Youth, Dependency: The Copenhagen Trilogy (Penguin Modern Classics)

Biographies & Memoirs

Arts & Literature

The acclaimed Danish poet Tove Ditlevsen's autobiographical Copenhagen Trilogy ("A masterpiece" --The Guardian) continues with Youth. Following Childhood, this second volume finds the young author consumed in trials by fire that only fuel her relentless passion for artistic freedom--placing her on a devastating and destructive path recounted in the final volume, Dependency. Forced to leave school early, Tove embarks on a checkered career in a string of low-paid, menial jobs. But she is hungry: for poetry, for love, for real life to begin. As Europe slides into war, she must navigate exploitative bosses, a Nazi landlady, and unwelcome sexual encounters on the road to hard-won independence. Yet she remains ruthlessly determined in the pursuit of her poetic vocation--until at last the miracle she has always dreamed of appears to be within reach. Youth, the second volume in the Copenhagen Trilogy, is a strikingly honest and immersive portrait of adolescence, filled with biting humor, vulnerability, and poeticism.

Youth: The Copenhagen Trilogy: Book 2 (The Copenhagen Trilogy, 2)

FSG Originals

The final volume in the renowned Danish poet Tove Ditlevsen's autobiographical Copenhagen Trilogy ("A masterpiece" --The Guardian). Following Childhood and Youth, Dependency is the searing portrait of a woman's journey through love, friendship, ambition, and addiction, from one of Denmark's most celebrated twentieth century writers Tove is only twenty, but she's already famous, a published poet, and the wife of a much older literary editor. Her path in life seems set, yet she has no idea of the struggles ahead--love affairs, wanted and unwanted pregnancies, artistic failure, and destructive addiction. As the years go by, the central tension of Tove's life comes into painful focus: the terrible lure of dependency, in all its forms, and the possibility of living freely and fearlessly--as an artist on her own terms. The final volume in the Copenhagen Trilogy, and arguably Ditlevsen's masterpiece, Dependency is a dark and blisteringly honest account of addiction, and the way out.

Dependency: The Copenhagen Trilogy: Book 3 (The Copenhagen Trilogy, 3)

Called "a masterpiece" by The New York Times, the acclaimed trilogy from Tove Ditlevsen, a pioneer in the field of genre-bending confessional writing 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. Throughout, the narrator grapples with the tension between her vocation as a writer and her competing roles as daughter, wife, mother, and drug addict, and she writes about female experience and identity in a way that feels very fresh and pertinent to today's discussions around feminism. 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. She can also be seen as a spiritual forerunner of confessional writers like Karl Ove Knausgaard, Annie Ernaux, Rachel Cusk and Deborah Levy. Her trilogy is drawn from her own experiences but reads like the most compelling kind of fiction. Born in a working-class neighborhood in Copenhagen in 1917, Ditlevsen became famous for her poetry while still a teenager, and went on to write novels, stories and memoirs before committing suicide in 1976. Having been dismissed by the critical establishment in her lifetime as a working-class, female writer, she is now being rediscovered and championed as one of Denmark's most important modern authors, with "Tove fever" gripping readers.

The Copenhagen Trilogy: Childhood; Youth; Dependency

Farrar. Straus and Giroux

About the Author\nTove Ditlevsen was born in 1917 in a working-class neighborhood in Copenhagen. Her first volume of poetry was published when she was in her early twenties and was followed by many more books, including the three volumes of the Copenhagen Trilogy: Childhood (1967), Youth (1967), and Dependency (1971). She died in 1976.\nThe Trouble with Happiness is a powerful new collection of short stories by Tove Ditlevsen, "a terrifying talent" (Parul Sehgal, New York Times).\nA newly married woman longs, irrationally, for a silk umbrella; a husband chases away his wife’s beloved cat; a betrayed mother impulsively sacks her housekeeper. Underneath the surface of these precisely observed tales of marriage and family life in mid-century Copenhagen pulse currents of desire, violence, and despair, as women and men struggle to escape from the roles assigned to them and dream of becoming free and happy―without ever truly understanding what that might mean.\nTove Ditlevsen is one of Denmark’s most famous and beloved writers, and her autobiographical Copenhagen Trilogy was hailed as a masterpiece on re-publication in English, lauded for its wry humor, limpid prose, and powerful honesty. The poignant and understated stories in The Trouble with Happiness, written in the 1950s and 1960s and never before translated into English, offer readers a new chance to encounter the quietly devastating work of this essential twentieth-century writer.

The Trouble with Happiness: And Other Stories

The celebrated Danish poet Tove Ditlevsen begins the Copenhagen Trilogy ("A masterpiece" --The Guardian) with Childhood, her coming-of-age memoir about pursuing a life and a passion beyond the confines of her upbringing--and into the difficult years described in Youth and Dependency Tove knows she is a misfit whose childhood is made for a completely different girl. In her working-class neighborhood in Copenhagen, she is enthralled by her wild, red-headed friend Ruth, who initiates her into adult secrets. But Tove cannot reveal her true self to her or to anyone else. For "long, mysterious words begin to crawl across" her soul, and she comes to realize that she has a vocation, something unknowable within her--and that she must one day, painfully but inevitably, leave the narrow street of her childhood behind. Childhood, the first volume in the Copenhagen Trilogy, is a visceral portrait of girlhood and female friendship, told with lyricism and vivid intensity.

Childhood: The Copenhagen Trilogy: Book 1 (The Copenhagen Trilogy, 1)

Complete Freedom

Curbstone Press

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