The Devil Book

'Nordenhof has a sort of literary X factor' OBSERVER
'A comet in Scandinavian literature' OLGA RAVN
'Fizzes and soars' MARK HADDON

xGuardian best translated fiction of 2025x

A classic girl-meets-boy-meets-devil story from a Danish literary superstar

A woman meets a man on a train in Copenhagen and agrees to visit him in London. She has lived many lives and as she sits out a two-week quarantine in his apartment, she begins to tell her story.

Years ago, desperate for money, she sold herself to a man called T. He offered her a suitcase full of money and lavish gifts in exchange for total control of her body. In the bed between them lay a large kitchen knife and the promise of an iconic death.

At the last moment, she chose life and fled. Now in London, the woman watches the people around her, searching for clues on how to live in the face of betrayal and loss, and what freedom really looks like.

Intimate, revelatory and ultimately revolutionary, this is a portrait of a woman driven to the brink of destruction, who learns to believe in love again.

'Like a normal novel with the boring bits taken out' Guardian

'Defiantly unique' Financial Times