WHAT YOU DO NOT WANT TO KNOW

DET, DU IKKE VIL VIDE – WHAT YOU DO NOT WANT TO KNOW

By Birgithe Kosovic

BIRGITHE KOSOVIC GROWS up in an ordinary family in Vestegnen in the 1980s with her younger brother, a Danish mother and a Yugoslav father. But the family has a secret, which she one day reveals, causing her father to cut off all contact with her. She had always sensed that this might happen.

IN WHAT YOU Do Not Want to Know, she explores her father’s anger to understand how they could have become as good as dead to one another. This sends her on a journey of discovery into the stories of her Danish and Yugoslav families, each of whom endured the horrors of the Second World War in their own way.

IS THIS A story of failed integration? Or is it a story of a perfectly ordinary family, where certain things were simply not to be spoken of aloud? And ultimately: how do you form a bond with someone who remains angry?