For The Millions, I reviewed Danish writer Dorthe Nors’ fascinating ‘A Line the World’:
What begins with Nors’s desire to escape the city becomes a meditative portrait of identity—personal, regional, national—in its making. Growing up the child of a carpenter and hairdresser in the post-industrial town of Herning, Nors followed the path of ambitious Danes from the provinces by heading east, first to study Swedish literature at the University of Aarhus before continuing on to join the Copenhagen literati. But, as A Line in the World describes, Nors felt confined by city living and longed for the region that shaped her. Lying on her apartment floor one day, Nors realizes she must change her life: “I want a storm surge, I thought. I want a north-west wind, fierce and hard. I want trees so battered and beaten they’re crawling over the ground.” But most of all, a “horizon is what I want, and I want solitude.” And so she returns West.
Read more here.