Book List: Three Books We’re Looking Forward To
Three new books we’re looking forward to — from powerful stories about women’s lives to moving mother‑daughter narratives and landscape novels that take you on unforgettable journeys.
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Alba de Céspedes – Fra hendes side (Her Side of the Story, translated by Nina Gross (Forlaget Multivers)
Alba de Céspedes can perhaps best be compared to Tove Ditlevsen. Both are exceptional stylists with a sharp eye for beauty as well as vulnerability. Both were celebrated in their own time, yet have achieved true cult status in recent years — Céspedes has been praised by writers such as Annie Ernaux, winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2022, and Elena Ferrante.
In 2023, The Forbidden Diary, Céspedes’ classic novel from 1952, was published in Danish. The novel follows Valeria, a 43‑year‑old woman who one day, almost by chance, buys a black notebook. In it, she begins to write down her thoughts, memories and experiences. The act of writing sets an existential shift in motion, unfolding page by page — at times reminiscent of Dostoevsky.
At the beginning of the new year, on 20 February, Fra hendes side (Her Side of the Story) will be published — a central work in Céspedes’ oeuvre, originally released in 1949 and today regarded as an indispensable classic about women’s struggle for independence. In the words of The New York Times Book Review, we can look forward to “a work of world literature that has lost none of its subversive power.”
Chantal Akerman – Min mor ler (My Mother Laughs), translated by Pernille Kaufmann (Aleatorik)
Chantal Akerman is best known as the director of what the renowned film magazine Sight & Sound has named the greatest film of all time: Jeanne Dielman, 23 quai du commerce, 1080 Bruxelles. The film is discussed in Sebastian Cordes’ highly acclaimed Verdens bedste film (The World’s Greatest Film) and can currently be seen at the Cinematheque in Copenhagen.
On 6 January 2026, with the publication of Min mor ler (My Mother Laughs), Akerman can also be experienced as a writer. In the book, Akerman documents her life after returning from New York to Brussels, her birthplace, as she cares for her dying mother. She dresses her, feeds her, puts her to bed — and writes about it all. About her childhood, about her mother’s escape from Auschwitz, and about the silence that became her mother’s lifelong companion.
My Mother Laughs is a moving and vital testimony to the violence of history, to care work, and to the relationship between a mother and a daughter.
Esther Kinsky – Rombo, translated by Thomas Skovmand (Atlanten)
Esther Kinsky is a relatively unfamiliar name in Denmark, but in both her native Germany and in the UK she is regarded as a key figure in contemporary literature. In particular, she is known for having developed her own distinctive genre: the landscape novel. In Kinsky’s work, it is the landscape — and the people within it — that are given a voice.
With remarkable sensitivity, Kinsky writes about moving through landscapes, being shaped by them, and ultimately being at their mercy — often drawing on stays and journeys in Hungary, England and Italy. It is here, in north‑eastern Italy, that her forthcoming novel Rombo is set.
In May and September 1976, the Friuli region was struck by two devastating earthquakes. Nearly a thousand people lost their lives, and many were forced to leave their homes. In Rombo, seven narrators unfold how the natural disaster has left its mark on their lives. The threads of their memories are woven together into moving stories of a shared trauma and an existence suddenly shaken to its core.