Danish authors have left remarkable footprint in the world of literature despite it being a small county and Danish not being a widespread language. Enjoy 6 Best Danish Books to Read in English!<\/p>\n
This post may contain affiliate links that earn us a commission at no extra cost to you.<\/em><\/p>\n Buy Now<\/strong>: Amazon<\/a> | AbeBooks<\/a><\/p>\n In 1848 a motley crew of Danish sailors sets sail from the small island town of Marstal to fight the Germans. Not all of them return \u2013 and those who do will never be the same. Among them is the daredevil Laurids Madsen, who promptly escapes again into the anonymity of the high seas.<\/p>\n Spanning four generations, two world wars and a hundred years, We, The Drowned is an epic tale of adventure, ruthlessness and passion. <\/p>\n Buy Now<\/strong>: Amazon<\/a> | AbeBooks<\/a><\/p>\n My Work is a novel about the unique and fundamental experience of giving birth, mixing different literary forms\u2015fiction, essay, poetry, memoir, and letters\u2015to explore the relationship between motherhood, work, individuality, and literature.\u201cOlga Ravn writes dazzlingly about the work of motherhood and the work of writing. Reading Ravn\u2019s book, you run through the whole gamut of human emotion, as though you too were a new mother: tears, laughter, anger, fear, pain, frustration.<\/p>\n Buy Now<\/strong>: Amazon<\/a> | AbeBooks<\/a><\/p>\n Social realism and fairy tale combine in\u00a0Lucky Per<\/em>, a\u00a0bildungsroman<\/em>\u00a0about the ambitious son of a clergyman who rejects his faith and flees a restricted life in rural Jutland for Denmark\u2019s capital city. Per is a gifted young man who firmly believes that \u2018you had to hunt down luck as if it were a wild creature, a crooked-fanged beast \u2026 and capture and bind it\u2019. He falls in with Copenhagen\u2019s Jewish community, and falls for Jakobe Salomon, a wealthy heiress, who is not only the strongest character in the book but among the great Jewish heroines of European literature.<\/p>\n Per becomes obsessed with a grand engineering scheme that he believes will both reshape Denmark\u2019s landscape and correct its minor position in the world. Eventually personal and his career ambitions alike come to grief. At the heart of\u00a0Lucky Per<\/em>\u00a0lies the question of the relationship of \u2018luck\u2019 to \u2018happiness\u2019 (the Danish word in the title can have both meanings), a relationship which Per comes to view differently by the end of his life.<\/p>\n Buy Now<\/strong>: Amazon<\/a> | AbeBooks<\/a><\/p>\n First published in 1992, Peter H\u00f8eg\u2019s Smilla\u2019s Sense of Snow instantly became an international sensation. When caustic Smilla Jaspersen discovers that her neighbor\u2013a neglected six-year-old boy, and possibly her only friend\u2013has died in a tragic accident, a peculiar intuition tells her it was murder. Unpredictable to the last page, Smilla\u2019s Sense of Snow is one of the most beautifully written and original crime stories of our time, a new classic.<\/p>\n Buy Now<\/strong>: Amazon<\/a> | AbeBooks<\/a><\/p>\n\n Romantics, adventurers, sensualists, melancholics and dreamers inhabit the bizarre and exotic world conjured up in these seven intricately interwoven tales, whose settings range from Tuscany and Elsinore, to a dhow on its way from Lamu to Zanzibar.<\/p>\n Proclaimed a masterpiece on its publication in 1934, this collection is shot through with themes of love and desire \u2013 from the maiden lady who now believes herself to have been the grand courtesan of her time, to the Count whose wife is so jealous that she cannot bear him to admire her jewels, and Lincoln Forsner, an Englishman whose search for a woman he met in a brothel leads him into many strange adventures.<\/p>\n \n Buy Now<\/strong>: Amazon<\/a> | AbeBooks<\/a><\/p>\n Dina has inherited her mother\u2019s gift: she is a Shamer, able to see a person\u2019s most guilty secrets just by gazing in their eyes. But sometimes her gift feels more like a curse. Nobody seems to want a friend who can see their deepest shame.<\/p>\n But when Dina\u2019s mother is called to Dunark Castle to uncover the truth about a terrible crime, Dina must come to terms with her power, and quickly \u2013 or let her mother fall prey to the vicious dragons of Dunark.<\/p>\n6 Best Danish Books to Read in English<\/h2>\n
We, the Drowned by Carsten Jensen<\/h2>\n
My Work by Olga Ravn<\/h2>\n
Lucky Per by Henrik Pontoppidan<\/h2>\n
Smilla\u2019s Sense of Snow By Peter H\u00f8eg<\/h2>\n
Seven Gothic Tales by Isak Dinesen<\/h2>\n
The Shamer\u2019s Daughter by Lene Kaaberb\u00f8l<\/h2>\n