Of Darkness

Book excerpt: "Klougart has an unusual ability to create phrases, images and a language that you long to stay in and remember forever."—Dagens Nyheter "One can speak of unbearable beauty, but one can also speak of a linguistic beauty that makes it possible to bear the unbearable."—Politiken In this genre-bending apocalyptic novel Josefine Klougart fuses myriad literary styles to breathtaking effect in poetic meditations on life and death interspersed with haunting imagery. Her experimental novel asks readers to reconsider death, asserting sorrow and loss as beautiful and necessary aspects of living. Hailed as "the Virginia Woolf of Scandinavia," Klougart mixes prose, lyric essay, drama, poetry, and images to breathtaking effect in her writing, and Of Darkness marks the arrival of a wholly new literary talent in world literature. Josefine Klougart (b. 1985) made her literary debut in 2010 with the novel Rise and Fall, which was nominated for the prestigious Nordic Council Literature Prize. Her third novel, One of Us is Sleeping, forthcoming from Open Letter Books in summer 2016, was also nominated for a Nordic Council Literature Prize, making her the youngest author ever nominated twice for this prominent prize. Her fourth and most recent novel, Of Darkness, appeared in Denmark in 2014 to universal critical acclaim and became a massive bestseller in Denmark and Norway. Translator Martin Aitken has won numerous awards for his translations of Danish literature, and he is currently working with Karl Ove Knausgaard to translate the final volume of My Struggle and his nonfiction.