Natalja's Stories

A brilliant, elegant, and playful novella newly in English by one of Denmarks most honored poets (Publishers Weekly)Known primarily for her poetry, Inger Christensen (1935-2009) remains one of Denmarks most distinguished and original authors. Nataljas Stories, modeled after Boccaccios Decameron, takes an usual approach to the theme of migration by focusing on the shifting ground of meaning itself. It is a tale told to the narrator by her grandmotherabout her mother, 'abducted' by a Russian from Copenhagen: taken to Russia, she tries to flee the Revolution; she dies and her ashes are carried back to Denmark. But the story is told and retold in marvelous ways, digressing playfully (often hilariously), and involving murders and absurd characters, with wonderful repeating motifs and passages. Nataljas Stories springs surprise after surprise, and as one Danish critic put it: instead of a conventional heartbreaking story of loss and disaster, the book appears as a tantalizing account of a character seizing the moment, leaving the past behind, and becoming someone elseoffering, in fact, a deconstruction of the usual take on migrant fate as a tragic narrative.