MØRKET BAG DIG – THE DARKNESS BEHIND YOU
By Kirsten Thorup
THE DARKNESS BEHIND YOU is an independent sequel to Until Madness, Until Death and a gripping novel about about a woman torn between beliefs during the German occupation of Denmark.
IT IS JANUARY 1943 in Copenhagen. Harriet is desperately trying to create a life for herself and her two sons after her husband, a Luftwaffe pilot, perished on the Eastern Front. Out of loyalty towards her late husband she is drawn towards welfare work on the German side in Copenhagen, but out of the blue she meets a man with a different perspective, and Harriet must make an important choice.
ABOUT THE BOOK
First published by Gyldendal, Denmark 2023
RIGHTS SOLD
Denmark, Gyldendal
REVIEWS
The Darkness Behind You is an excellent novel about the dynamics of war and the challenges it creates. About the either-or-logic, that will often burn more bridges, than build them, and about how individual relations and love sometimes, often, always are stronger than the world outside, even when it is on fire.”
– Berlingske, Denmark
A masterful new novel … a heart wrenching novel … Thorup’s novel is a story that aims precisely into the dilemmas of right now, it felt like a blow to my heart.
Kristeligt Dagblad, Denmark
Both as an arrangement of a complicated material and as real empathy Kirsten Thorup’s novel is an accomplishment. Once again, she demonstrates her immense strength, when it comes to show, that each human life is a world within its own right with areas of darkness and light.
– Information, Denmark
Harriet is an uncommon, unforgettable, vivacious character, fundamentally cool, moving from immediate alertness to lofty reflection and back again … This novel is a blazingly excellent use of time.”
– Weekendavisen, Denmark
It is Nazism in its concentrated form that she encounters here, war at the most intimate level. The way Thorup’s cool style collides with such a detailed and accurate portrait of privileged life in Nazi Germany, with all its hidden monstrosities and callousness, is intoxicating to read.
– Politiken, Denmark
The novel’s real strength is not that it gives us a stellar portrait of everyday life under Nazism. It’s that it portrays people whose lives will forever be shaped by the war, but who right now are in the middle of the story. It shows us people full of hope and a fighting spirit, which in retrospect seems utterly futile. Or people suffering from despair before their suffering has really begun. It shows us a person who has taken the completely and utterly wrong turn but can’t yet know it.
– Information, Denmark
BOOKS
Fiction
