Wild Swims

A hauntingly insightful new short story collection from the Man Booker International Prize shortlisted author

This is a collection resplendent with longing. In these pages, people meet without actually connecting, travellers set off but never seem to find home. We encounter them on the fjords of Norway, in the bustle of Los Angeles, and among the lights of Copenhagen. Outsiders yearn to be on the inside, insiders are desperate to be free. A writer befriends an ex-lover's mother. An elderly man offers his body to aging women. A woman's childhood memories of wild swimming draw her back to the water.

In prose that is both elegantly spare and saturated with emotion, Dorthe Nors shines a light into forgotten corners and conjures darkness where it's least expected. Her characteristic sharpness and sense of humour are ever-present, catching us when the melancholy threatens to come too close. Love, cruelty, friendship and loneliness are all here, in these stories that brim with life.

Dorthe Nors was born in 1970 and studied literature at the University of Aarhus. She is one of the most original voices in contemporary Danish literature. Her short stories have appeared in numerous international periodicals including The Boston Review and Harpers, and she is the first Danish writer ever to have a story published in the New Yorker. Nors is the author of the novel Mirror, Shoulder, Signal, which was shortlisted for the Man Booker International Prize, a novella Minna Needs Rehearsal Space and a collection of stories Karate Chop, also published by Pushkin Press. Karate Chop won the prestigious P. O. Enquist Literary Prize in 2014. She lives in rural Jutland, Denmark.