Overview

Shortlisted for the Wainwright Prize 2023 There is a line that stretches from the northernmost tip of Denmark to where the Wadden Sea meets Holland in the south-west. Dorthe Nors, one of Denmark's most acclaimed contemporary writers, grew up on this line; a native Jutlander, her childhood was spent among the storm-battered trees and wind-blasted beaches of the North Sea coast. In A Line in the World, her first book of non-fiction, she recounts a lifetime spent in thrall to this coastline - both as a child, and as an adult returning to live in this mysterious, shifting landscape. This is the story of the violent collisions between the people who settled in these wild landscapes and the vagaries of the natural world. It is a story of storm surges and shipwrecks, sand dunes that engulf houses and power stations leaching chemicals into the water, of sun-creased mothers and children playing on shingle beaches. In this singularly thrilling work, Nors invites the reader on a journey through history and memory - the landscape's as well as her own. 'A journey in [Nors's] company is never a dull prospect... Along this mutable coast, on the border between map and myth, Nors is in her element' - TLS 'A beautiful, melancholy account of finding home on a restless coast. In Dorthe Nors's deft hands, the sea is no longer a negative space, but a character in its own right. I loved it.' - Katherine May, author of Wintering

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9781782277958

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Reviews

'A stunning portrayal of the connection between landscape, human beings, and memory on the Danish west coast... [Dorthe Nors's] rhythm, her stillness, her humility, her ability to finish calm sentences as if they were a song... This is a masterpiece.' - Dagbladet Information 'Dorthe Nors's writing is both poetic and harsh, laconic and ironic, and with an impressionable clarity that yet always seems to be keeping secrets, hidden between sentences and words. Her prose makes its way into the landscape and the soul, which opens up and receives' - Kristeligt Dagblad 'This is a strong work of art that works on several levels. A book that pierces its way into something quintessentially Danish and Jutlandish, without ever appearing provincial, while at all times maintaining its grand outlook... It is a book you know that you will return to once you put it down' - Pov International 'Dorthe Nors is an author unlike anyone else' - Femina 'Magic... sometimes funny, sometimes chilling, always involving. This is awonderful holiday in a very fine writer's heart' - Michael Pye, author of TheEdge of the World: How the North Sea Made Us Who We Are 'A Line in the World is starkly, achingly beautiful. With stunning intimacyand precision-as attentive to tiny details in nature as she is to vast cloudlessskies - Nors shows us how places and their histories shape who we are andhow we find home.', Jessica J. Lee, author of Turning and Two Trees Makea Forest

'A stunning portrayal of the connection between landscape, human beings, and memory on the Danish west coast... [Dorthe Nors's] rhythm, her stillness, her humility, her ability to finish calm sentences as if they were a song... This is a masterpiece.' - Dagbladet Information 'Dorthe Nors's writing is both poetic and harsh, laconic and ironic, and with an impressionable clarity that yet always seems to be keeping secrets, hidden between sentences and words. Her prose makes its way into the landscape and the soul, which opens up and receives' - Kristeligt Dagblad 'This is a strong work of art that works on several levels. A book that pierces its way into something quintessentially Danish and Jutlandish, without ever appearing provincial, while at all times maintaining its grand outlook... It is a book you know that you will return to once you put it down' - Pov International 'Dorthe Nors is an author unlike anyone else' - Femina 'Magic... sometimes funny, sometimes chilling, always involving. This is awonderful holiday in a very fine writer's heart' - Michael Pye, author of TheEdge of the World: How the North Sea Made Us Who We Are 'A Line in the World is starkly, achingly beautiful. With stunning intimacyand precision-as attentive to tiny details in nature as she is to vast cloudlessskies - Nors shows us how places and their histories shape who we are andhow we find home.', Jessica J. Lee, author of Turning and Two Trees Makea Forest

Author Information

Dorthe Nors was born in 1970 and studied literature at the University of Aarhus. She is one of the most original voices in contemporary Danish literature. Her short stories have appeared in numerous international publications including the Boston Review and Harper's, and she is the first Danish writer ever to have a short story published in the New Yorker. Nors has published several works of fiction, including the novella Minna Needs Rehearsal Space, the novel Mirror, Shoulder, Signal - shortlisted for the Man Booker International Prize - and a collection of stories, Karate Chop, all published by Pushkin Press. Karate Chop won the prestigious P. O. Enquist Literary Prize in 2014. She lives in rural Jutland, Denmark.

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