LÆSENOTER: Financial
Money permeates our lives – and our literature. From classic novels to contemporary works, authors repeatedly explore the relationship between economy, power, love and dignity. In this edition of LÆSENOTER, we have brought together a selection of fiction and non-fiction titles that each, in their own way, offer insight into the role money plays in our shared and personal histories.
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- LÆSENOTER: Financial
Money in Literature – From Classics to Contemporary Writing
Once you start noticing them, money is everywhere in fiction. In 2012, Hans Boll-Johansen published Money, a book-length essay that offers an excellent entry point to the literary history of money – and to the history of money in literature. The list of names is long. Among Danish authors, Boll-Johansen writes about Kirsten Thorup, Henrik Pontoppidan, Jens Smærup Sørensen and Knud Sørensen. Internationally, he turns to Dostoevsky, Balzac, Dickens, Stendhal and Proust. This history also includes the Swedish classic Money by Victoria Benedictsson (1850–1888), with an insightful foreword by Emma Holten.
Tove Ditlevsen also wrote about money. A number of her texts are collected under the title On Money. A father’s bankbook. An expensive confirmation. An eggnog that threatens the relationship between mother and daughter. These are some of the episodes explored here.
When Economy Enters the Narrative
Among more recent authors, Asta Olivia Nordenhof has engaged with questions of economy in her serial novel about the arson attack on the Scandinavian Star. The first volumes, Money in the Pocket and The Devil’s Book, have both been published, and a third volume will be released later this year. One can assume that, like the previous books, it explores the possible – but above all impossible – connections between love, capitalism and violence. Nordenhof has also contributed to the anthology Now That I Am Creditworthy, in which a number of the country’s most prominent authors, through weighty, uplifting and moving texts, reflect on the economic conditions under which they live.
Not long ago, Daniel Dencik’s (much-anticipated) short story collection Kroner and Islands was also published. The stories are rooted in a series of tense situations that illuminate our relationship with money and our perception of value. Yet, as Erik Skyum-Nielsen writes in Information, one senses “across and beneath the stories a troubled insight suggesting that a Western, civilised and digitised lifestyle of long-haul travel, overconsumption and a self-deceptive celebration of boundlessness has long since crossed every limit – and that for each individual it has now become a matter of mentally freeing oneself by making humble, considerate choices in life.” It is reading for our time.
Understanding the Economy – and the World
If we move from fiction to non-fiction, Ha-Joon Chang’s Economics: The User’s Guide is a good and refreshingly accessible place to begin. Chang became world-famous with 23 Things They Don’t Tell You About Capitalism. In this follow-up, he takes a step back and asks the most fundamental questions, such as “What is economics?” and “Why does economics matter?” The answers are surprising and world-opening, written with a great sense of clarity and an inviting ease.
A strong place to continue is with the works of Thomas Piketty, which are fortunately available in excellent translations. Capital in the Twenty-First Century is Piketty’s major breakthrough, mapping the development of global inequality. Capital and Ideology is a staggering main work in which Piketty effectively retells world history to demonstrate how shifting ideologies have a vested interest in preserving inequality. In 2024, A History of Political Conflict followed, written together with Julia Cagé, tracing the voting behaviour of French citizens from the French Revolution to the present day. The aim is not only to provide historical insight, but also to document how democracy functions – and which lines of conflict are shaping the political landscape of the future. Piketty writes long books, but the reading is worth the effort. Regardless of political leaning.
Economy, Climate and the System’s Fault Lines
The green agenda is, to a large extent, also an economic agenda. One of the books in this field that has attracted significant international attention is the French economist Timothée Parrique’s Degrowth or Doom. One of the reasons is that Parrique writes with both academic weight and genuine readability. Engaged. Accessible. In the same growth-critical tradition, Kate Raworth’s Doughnut Economics also deserves mention – a book that has almost achieved the status of a modern classic.
Finally, we would like to touch on a few books that press on sore points – places where our current economic order fails. Grace Blakeley’s Vulture Capitalism is a well-written, once again highly readable, examination of how large, respected corporations present themselves as champions of the free market, while in reality being deeply dependent on the economic benevolence of the state. On 21 April, a book we are very much looking forward to will be published: Dark Money by Peter Meedom. Meedom investigates how US tech oligarchs and autocrats such as Vladimir Putin and Ukraine’s former president Viktor Yanukovych use the so-called offshore system to create a global shadow economy – far removed from the public purse. The consequence is an increasing concentration of power, and a refuge for the criminal and the corrupt. Finally, Gabriel Zucman’s Billionaires Must Pay Tax Too also deserves a mention. “Mandatory reading,” Thomas Piketty has called the book. The title says it all. We are looking forward to reading it when it is published on 30 April.
In the meantime, we recommend the interview DJØFbladet conducted with Zucman.
Happy reading!
