The Trouble with Happiness

A shimmering collection of stories from the author of The Copenhagen Trilogy, translated into English for the first timeA 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 love, marriage and family life in mid-century Copenhagen pulse currents of desire, violence and despair, as women and men dream of escaping their conventional roles and finding freedom and happiness - without ever truly understanding what that might mean.

“Ditlevsen's writing is crystal clear and vividly, painfully raw”

Splendid short stories... the purity and dazzling insight of Ditlevsen's writing speaks for itself

-- Lucy Scholes The Telegraph
An intense reading experience... so clear is Ditlevsen's eye that it's impossible to tear yourself away from the fates of her characters, however grim -- John Self Guardian

These short stories show off her astonishingly precise prose

-- New Statesman Ellen Peirson-Hagger

A bracingly bleak selection of stories by the celebrated Danish writer Tove Ditlevsen... These are perfectly judged pieces: authentic, unforced and utterly lucid

-- Phil Baker Sunday Times
Ditlevsen's wonderful and devastatingly bleak short stories simmer with melancholy and despair ... Her prose is clear and spare, pared back to the essential task of describing the struggle for an unwon freedom from domestic despair and unsatisfactory marriages Daily Mail

The depths of desire and despair are Ditlevsen's subjects and illuminating them is her talent

Monocle
The Paris Review
A terrifying talent The New York Times
Her writing is incredible, so focused and clear. Not a word that doesn't need to be there -- Tracey Thorn

Tove Ditlevsen (Author)Tove Ditlevsen was born in 1917 in a working-class neighbourhood 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 novels The Faces and Vilhelm's Room and her autobiographical masterpiece, Childhood (1967), Youth (1967) and Dependency (1971). She married four times and died by suicide in 1976.

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