Vilhelm's Room

A searing final novel about the collapse of a marriage and its aftermath, by the author of the modern classic Copenhagen Trilogy.

I want to write a book about Vilhelm’s room and the events which took place in it, or arose from it; those that led to Lise’s death, which I have survived only so that I might write down the story of her and Vilhelm . . .

Vilhelm is gone. He has abandoned Lise, and the room where they once loved each other will soon be destroyed. From a bed in a psychiatric ward, Lise places a lonely-hearts ad in the newspaper: “Recently escaped a long, unhappy marriage – aged 51, but youthful in spirit – wonderful son, aged 15 – household literary name – summerhouse – large flat in the city centre – temporarily incapacitated by a nervous breakdown – prefers a motorist.” With this small plea for connection, she sets off a train of tragicomic events that trundles toward an annihilating, inevitable finale.

Vilhelm’s Room, now published for the first time in English, channels the same mordant intensity as Tove Ditlevsen’s beloved and acclaimed Copenhagen Trilogy, cementing her rediscovered legacy as one of Denmark’s most important modern authors after a lifetime of being dismissed as a female working-class writer. Her final novel before her untimely passing in 1976, it is a powerful conclusion to her extraordinary work as a poet, novelist, and memoirist: a bleakly funny and devastating tour de force that pulses with life even as it journeys toward death.