This is one of FOURTY–EIGHT translations on the longlist—a pretty impressive number! I’m not going to list all of them here—that would be insane—but you can read if you want more info.

Also, it only makes sense for an “international” award to have a third of their longlist be works in translation. Now let’s see if one of these wins . . . Speaking of, the shortlist will be announced in April 2018, and the winner in June. That gives you eight months to read every one of these books (doable!) and test your opinions against the six judges.

by Josefine Klougart, translated from the Danish by Martin Aitken

Original Language: Danish, which has 5.5 million native speakers (according to Wikipedia)

Year of Original Publication: 2012, with our English edition coming out this past June.

Awards Received: One of Us Is Sleeping was an official best-seller in Denmark (making our edition an “International Bestseller,” I believe), weas shortlisted for the Readers’ Book Award (Læsernes Bogpris), and was a finalist for the Nordic Council Literature Prize. This was the second time she was nominated for the Nordic Council Literature Prize (she was also a finalist for Rise and Fall in 2011), which made her the youngest author ever to accomplish this feat.

Let’s put that in context for a second: By the age of 30, Josefine had published four collections, two of which were finalists for a prize awarding the best book from five countries (Iceland, Finland, Sweden, Norway, and Denmark). Too bad she wasn’t eligible for the National Book Foundation’s because daaaammmnnn.

Notable Praise: The quote that we use on the cover of our book—like most anyone would—is “Scandinavia now has its own Virginia Woolf.” But just scroll down to see all the great blurbs that this book has received.

Americans—including most chain “booksellers” and probably even our distributor—would look at this and dismiss them because they’re “not from U.S. or UK publications.” Which is so utterly stupid when you think about it. I’ve heard that refrain my whole career, and every time I can’t help but think that reviews from foreign publications are oftentimes more intelligent and trustworthy since these reviewers read both their own country’s books and the big American novels. A Danish critic knows about J-Franz and Colson Whitehead and Josefine Klougart. Not to mention, they also have access to so many more international works than we do, simply by living in Europe where more titles are translated and where the people speak more languages. But because we can’t pronounce the name of the publication, we assume it’s some hand-printed broadsheet or a blog or something. We are so weirdly close minded.

Other Comparisons: The ones that have come up the most are: Anne Carson, Maggie Nelson, and Joan Didion. I like Josefine’s response to all these, in which she basically just shrugged it off. Everyone needs comparisons—our minds are great at understanding connections and things in relation to one another, but quite crap at evaluating things on their own, in isolation—and it’s the job of marketers to supply them. It’s why I usually include those cheeky “X Meets Y” bits in these write-ups. It’s so silly, and yet . . . In the way that it uses touchstone images and a circular, poetic structure, One of Us Is Sleeping most reminds me of Virginia Woolf’s The Waves. I assume people still read The Waves. It really is the best Woolf.

A Word about the Translator: All of our translators are great translators, but holy mother has Martin translated a lot of key Danish authors. He doesn’t seem to have his own website, or a Wikipedia page, or anywhere really detailing what he’s done, except maybe Jussi Adler-Olsen, Peter Høeg, Kim Leine, Helle Helle, Dorthe Nors, Pia Juul, and part of the final volume of My Struggle are just some of the highlights from his career. There are other great Danish translators—Kyle Semmel, Kerri Pierce, and Susanne Nied all come to mind—but given his output, the quality of his work, and the authors he’s doing, Martin is right there as one of the greatest translators of our time.

How Tall Is Josefine? I’m very short. Like not quite vertically challenged short, but you’d be hard pressed to find a grown male shorter than I am. So I like to exaggerate other people’s height, especially when they are legitimately tall. The first time I met Josefine, I felt like she had to kneel down to be able to hear what I was saying. Which led to my telling people she was like 6’6” or so. After Will Evans of Deep Vellum met her, he sent me a message about how she was the most wonderful eight-foot-tall author in the world.

I believe she is 6’1”. Which is pretty tall. Here’s a picture of her next to Susan Harris of Words Without Borders (who is a bit shorter than I am and interviewed Josefine in Chicago).

According to Susan, “Yes, I am wearing three-inch platforms, and Josefine is in flats. Hard to believe we’re the same species.”

Other Books in English: Up next for Josefine is which is forthcoming from Deep Vellum!

What’s Next: In November, Josefine’s new novel comes out in Denmark. I don’t remember the title at this second . . . I do know that it was supposed to come out last year, but she started revising and adding things and suddenly there were 200 new pages, bringing the total book to 700 pages. Given our string of 700 page books (Gesell Dome, Invented Part, etc.), I think this is destined to be an Open Letter title.

Danish Women Writers Series: One of Us Is Sleeping is the second book in Open Letter’s Danish Women Writers Series, preceded by Naja Marie Aidt’s Rock, Paper, Scissors, and followed by Justine by Iben Mondrup (November 2016), The Eternal Summer by Madame Nielsen, and The Easy and the Lonely by Asta Olivia.

This series grew out of a trip to Copenhagen in 2013 and a generous grant from the Danish Arts Foundation. Initially the grant was simply to do five books from Danish, but given that all the books we gravitated toward were written by women, and given the fact that so few books by women are translated into English, we thought we’d make this exclusively a series to promote Danish women writers. It’s an amazing list of five books that covers a range of genres and styles (from Aidt’s more thriller-esque novel to Olivia’s poetry) and is an attempt to bring more attention to writing by international women.

Of course, these books haven’t been as well reviewed as they should be (my opinion), and I’m scared to compare the amount of attention they’ve received against the books we’ve published by men around the same time. Someone should write a feature or blog post about this series though. Occasionally you see pieces like this—like about Dalkey’s Library of Korean Literature . . . Perhaps we should’ve published all five at once in similarly bland covers? That’s a joke, but there is a gimmick element necessary to get attention. Doing interesting publishing projects like this in a straightforward, meaningful way isn’t going to get you written up in the New Yorker. Seriously though: If you’re interested in reading more women, supporting women’s lit in translation, or just finding some great Scandinavian books, give this series a look.

A Rochester Shout-Out: I have to mention that when Josefine was here, she was on which was one of the first radio programs (I think she said “the first,” but I’ll give everyone the benefit of the doubt) she ever appeared on in which the host had actually read the complete book. And thought about it. And marked passages to read aloud during the program. It’s nice to share some kind words about our town.

Jacket Copy: Not the easiest book to describe, given how imagistic and non-linear it is. But here’s what we went with:

The English-language debut from one of Denmark’s most exciting, celebrated young writers, One of Us Is Sleeping is a haunting novel about loss in all its forms.

As she returns home to visit her mother who is dying of cancer, the narrator recounts a brief, intense love affair, as well as the grief and disillusionment that follow its end. The book’s striking imagery and magnificent prose underpin its principal theme: the jarring contrast between the recollection of stability—your parents, your childhood home, your love—and the continual endings that we experience throughout our lives.

A true-to-life, deeply poetic novel that works in the same vein as Anne Carson, One of Us Is Sleeping has won Klougart countless accolades and award nominations—including the Readers’ Book Award—securing her place as a major new voice in world literature.

And here’s Josefine’s statement from

One of Us is Sleeping is a novel about leaving and being left behind; a story about the unfolding of a relationship that insists on the necessity of sorrow. It is a novel about loss, homelessness, and light.

Audience: Do you like to feel? Do you like sadness? Do you like to experience emotional loss? Then this book is for you!

To be serious, this is one of the most emotionally charged—and pretty depressing—books we’ve ever published. It’s intense and gorgeous and loaded with feelings.

When Is It Best to Read: The Winter.

Sample Paragraph:

It’s strange, he lies, I never miss you when you’re not here. I get so scared I might forget you, he tells her. He has talked her into meeting. I’m beginning to forget you, he says. That’s the way it’s supposed to be, malicious voices tell her, only these are her own thoughts, they carry her signature. And presumably it is what he wants, or what a person dreams about at night; dreams about during the day, not wishing it upon one’s worst enemy. They walk there together, in the park by the National Gallery. It is summer adn they are constantly on the run from someone. Both of them seeing someone else now, and one of them always wanting to try again. But only one.

Longer Excerpt: Check out the from our catalog.

Personal Pitch: I don’t have the time (or health to be honest, I’ve got a cold and I’m fading) to do a full-blown pitch like last week, but there are a few things that I want to say.

First off, I really don’t intend to highlight all our new books in this series as they come out. But with Josefine on tour, I wanted to bring a little extra attention to this book. It was absolutely incredible to hang out with her and her editor Jakob Sandvad here in Rochester. Their publishing company, Gladiator, was in the Danish Literary Magazine last fall, and presents an interesting way of conceiving of a publishing house. A lot of their focus is on involving authors in the whole process, including having them recommend authors for translation into Danish, and sometimes even doing the translation. When they were here, we spent a lot of time talking about how to reach readers, how to make events more exciting, how to make literary conversations more rich and fulfilling. It’s a breath of fresh air to talk to engaged literary people like this.

Also, I beat them badly at basketball. Well, this basketball:

Secondly, One of Us Is Sleeping is definitely the sort of book I was thinking of in last week’s post about wanting to reread particular novels. Although in this case, I think of it more as having to “read slow.” There’s no way to rush through this book. If you do, you’ll be completely lost and unaware of the recurring images and the ways in which the story could be restructured into something much more linear. English classes exist—at least in some regard—to train students how to read slow and read critically, skills that are very beneficial when it comes to serious literature like this. There should be some sort of “slow read” movement to go along with all the “slow eating” and “slow” everything movements that exist right now.

Finally, when Josefine was on the aforementioned radio show last week, she explained how she wrote this novel. Paraphrasing here, but basically, she kept a single Word document open on her computer for a year and wrote a page a day. After that, she went back and started looking through it for recurring images. And then built the book around that, retaining its nonlinear nature, since that’s really how our lives work. As she said, at any moment in time, our consciousness is living in the now, in the past, and in the future—almost simultaneously. One of Us Is Sleeping captures that feeling in beautiful, soul-crushing prose. And once you know the way it came together, it makes even more sense. Especially if you read it slowly!

Buy It: Of course you should but if you happen to be in the Bay Area next Tuesday (October 4th), you can catch her at Also, I know she signed copies at a number of New York area bookstores, and in Houston, Chicago, Dallas, and Portland. Go get one!

Just to as not to bury the lede, the is Friday, September 23rd at 6pm at Nox Cocktail Lounge. Josefine will be there to talk about which she’ll also be talking about on at 1pm that same day. (So tune in!). But since most of you aren’t in Rochester, I wanted to explain a bit of the Read Local idea . . .

First off, a bit of an origin story: At the beginning of the summer, Kyle Semmel—author, translator of Naja Marie Aidt’s and many other books—took over as the director of Writers & Books is the Rochester, NY eqivalent of Minneapolis’s or Bethesda’s Writers & Books is home to dozens of writing classes (for adults, teens, and kids) and hosts a number of literary events, such as an upcoming appearance by David Sedaris, the “Debut Novel Series,” “If All Rochester Reads the Same Book . . . ,” and more. It’s been around for more than forty years, over which time it became the de facto hub of literary activity in Rochester.

I don’t think it’s speaking out of school, or a big secret, to say that one of the things that attracted Kyle to this position was the fact that Open Letter and BOA Editions are located here. It’s easy to shit on Rochester for any number of reasons, but given the size of the city, it’s kind of insane that there are two nationally respected publishing houses based here. Obviously, Minneapolis-St. Paul (home to Coffee House, Graywolf, Milkweed) and Portland, OR (home to Tin House, Future Tense) are more prominent and well-known mid-sized cities with vibrant indie publishing scenes, but both metro areas are 2.5 to 3.5 times the size of Rochester. (Minneapolis-St. Paul is 3.5 million people and Portland almost 2.5, whereas Rochester is just over a million.) The fact that Rochester is home to multiple presses that receive national attention—be it from reviews, awards, or general respect—is something the visitor’s center and local media should be all over.

Unfortunately, that’s not really the case. BOA, which has been around for forty years, has a solid base of local supporters, but their books aren’t ever covered in the local papers, except for the occasional mention of a local poet reading during Jazz Fest. This might be the fault of the local media—which is pretty milquetoast and unimaginative, if I’m being honest—but it’s also related to the problem of being a book publisher: by definition, books aren’t local, and neither are your readers.

That said, there’s no reason that a city like Rochester shouldn’t be celebrating its local publishing houses. Which is why we came up with the idea of Like most places in the U.S., there’s a huge emphasis in Rochester on buying local, eating local, shopping at farmer’s markets, locally sourcing goods and services—and although it won’t necessarily disrupt our late capitalist moment in quite as dramatic fashion, or shrink our carbon footprint, why not involve local culture in this as well? The core concept was that every few months, we would have a local book club that would read a book published by a local press. Open Letter and BOA would have at least one slot a year, with the other ones being filled by other publishers in town. (Yes, there are others.)

In terms of specifics, we figured the book club could take place online to start, and culminate in an event with the author. But we didn’t want this to just be a reading . . . Readings are all fine and good, but holy christ, even in a place as small as Rochester, there are a ton of them. What we wanted was more of an interaction between an author and readers. Which lead to these postcards that we’ve been putting up all over town:

There are plenty of examples of reading series that aren’t just reading series—like the or or even “Poetry and Pies” here in Rochester—and it’s not like we’re breaking all new ground here, but it is a solid attempt to try and reach readers in a different way than we have been. And to build a program that readers will get excited about and look forward to. (The idea of hanging out with a famous author over a drink is more appealing to me than any normal reading.)

Additionally, we partnered with local businesses—“Hart’s Local Grocers,”:https://hartslocalgrocers.com/ and more soon—to sell the selected books before the event. Our hope is that by encountering the book in non-traditional locations, potential readers will be more likely to pick them up and come to the event. I suspect that most people in Rochester envision a book reading as a staid, dry event taking place in an oak-paneled room in a library. (This concept reaches far beyond Rochester.) So although it’s not revolutionary to hold a raucous literary event in a bar . . . it kind of is.

We have no real idea of how this is going to go on Friday, but hopefully a few dozen people will show up and be charmed by Josefine. Hopefully it will evolve from a short reading into more of a cocktail party with a famous author—something that’s common in places like Brooklyn, but not really here in Rochester. If you happen to be here in Rochester, come on out and grab a drink. If not, wish us luck. It would be great to see Read Local become an established part of the local literary scene—one that connects the great work of local presses with the local reading community.

We know so very little; so little that what we think to be knowledge is hardly worth reckoning with at all; instead we ought to settle for being pleasantly surprised if, on the edge of things, against all expectations, our assumption should be disproved.

Constant motion, collapsing buildings and meticulous work in stone. The unfamiliar as a wall we must forever scrabble to remove in order to find our humanity there and perhaps even love someone.

The first of Josefine Klougart’s award-winning novels to be translated into english, One of Us Is Sleeping (Én af os sover) is a dolorous, yet beautifully composed work of failed love, loss, and lament. The star of Klougart’s book is her gorgeous, evocative imagery and emotional acuity. With grief aplenty—mourning the fated end of a romantic relationship, as well as her ill mother—the Danish author’s sorrowful narrator is ever-conflicted, trying as she does to move beyond what’s been, despite being eternally bound to it.

The past does not come creeping in the form of images, it’s there all the time, tugging at your sleeve, trailing along behind you, occasionally wanting to be lifted up and carried.

The uncertainty, instability, doubt, regret, and longing that so often follow a failed relationship are richly and realistically conveyed. Klougart’s narrator’s emotional turmoil (punctuated, staccato) are quite nearly palpable and viscerally received. One of Us Is Sleeping, as much a series of thematically linked poetic offerings as a novel proper, is graceful and unforgettable. As Klougart’s narrator strives for clarity, understanding, and consolation, she’s left, as the rest of us undoubtedly are, to make sense of her own perceptions and boldly reassemble for herself the pieces of her shattered, shattering heart.

How naïve I’ve been, I think to myself. Or rather: how lonely. How closely I scrutinized, how clearly I saw it all in my mind—all that nearly was. The person who could love, almost; this almost-love, forever postponed, something else in its place. What, exactly. Reality. Whatever that is. Yours, I suppose.

Monday, September 19th, 7:00 pm
Reading and Conversation with Maria Marqvard Jensen
(58 Park Ave, New York, NY)

Wednesday, September 21st, 7:00 pm
Reading and Conversation with Josefine Klougart and Sarah Gerard
(143 7th Ave, Brooklyn, NY)

Friday, September 23rd, 6:00 pm
Event with Josefine Klougart
Nox Cocktail Lounge (302 N. Goodman, Rochester, NY)

Saturday, September 24th, 3:00 pm
Reading and Conversation with Susan Harris
(1301 E 57th St, Chicago, IL)

Monday, September 26th, 7:00 pm
Reading and Conversation with Josefine Klougart
(2421 Bissonnet Street, Houston, TX)

Tuesday, September 27th, 7:00 pm
Reading and Conversation with Josefine Klougart
(3000 Commerce St, Dallas, TX)

Thursday, September 29, 7:30 pm
Reading and Conversation with Josefine Klougart
(3723 SE Hawthorne Blvd, Portland, OR)

Monday, October 3, 4:30-6:30 pm
Talk and Reading with the Department of Scandinavian
(Berkeley, CA)

Tuesday, October 4, 7:30 pm
Reading and Conversation with Josefine Klougart
(506 Clement St., San Francisco, CA)

The fatality of time and again believing the world is determined by something. Something outside of itself. Or just determined, in whatever way at all. Timing. Believing you can see patterns in the world is the same as imagining you can reach out of a window, hold out your hand and wait a couple of seconds until a leaf, a feeble, tattered leaf, settles there gently, surely in your palm. The same as expecting you can fall asleep, in such a world.

And yet it happens all the time: people fall asleep. You see connections. Or you think you see connections; and for a moment you might feel you belong.

That something like a home exists.

Only it’s not as simple as that; there are moments of collapse, life consists of little else.

A face brought down, revealed to be one’s own.

Sensing how the sand on the beach in front of the hotel at Svinkløv is retrieved by the sea as each wave retreats. The current they warn you against, and which the body recognises before the mind; an urge to succumb.

And that would be it.

What such an urge might mean.

She misses having a home, it’s a condition.

Eventually she falls asleep and dreams about a man who says in English: My hands are dirty, you don’t want to meet me.

The world laughing in your face like that. The writing laughs with it, that line of dialogue. It all gets entangled in the writing. What was, and what is, or perhaps may come. Sentences and lines of dialogue.

A desire to be older, revealing itself to be a desire not to lose one’s childhood. Not to lose anything, whatever it might be, to maintain a hold in the flow of all things, to stand firm there and: preserve. In some form, to keep hold of it all, and not leave anything behind in that burning house. Wherever you go, you leave behind you a trail of disaster, no matter what the circumstance, that’s how it is. A trail of collapse, something falling outside of all recollection, all that is not remembered by anyone and is forgotten by the world. She is not quite sure, but the feeling grows stronger, she sees it in him; a kind of reverse will to live; a nostalgic reluctance towards surrendering oneself to the world that exists. That kind of panic in the tissue, a fear of forgetting. She writes so as not to forget things, or else she writes in order to forget things and invent others more worthy of remembrance. Perhaps that’s what writing is: you start moving about in the world like a sleepwalker in the night, looking for something more real, a truth there; and then all of a sudden it is sleep that you sacrifice, then suddenly the family, then everything that is valuable and means something. Dreams while awake, ideas, pulling everything with them like waves returning, returning to the sea, faces washed away, washed clean of all humanity. Or the opposite: invoking a humanity all too exaggerated: too much human in too small a space, that pealing reality when your entire being wants that someone else.

She thought the right thing to do was perhaps to find a life first, and only then look for a way of working that fit in with that life. That it should happen in that order, instead of carrying on the way things were; searching for a way of living that fit in with her work.