Description

Me, my notebook and my love of the wild and desolate. I wanted to do the opposite of what was expected of me. It’s a recurring pattern in my life. An instinct.

There is a line that stretches from the northernmost tip of Denmark to where the Wadden Sea meets Holland in the south-west. Dorthe Nors, one of Denmark’s most acclaimed writers, is a descendant of this line; for generations, her family lived among the storm-battered trees and wind-blasted beaches of the North Sea coast. Returning after decades of inhabiting cities, she chronicles a year spent travelling up and down the coast, tracing the history and geography of the places she visits and untangling her relationship with the landscape she calls home.

This is the story of the violent collisions between the people who live in these wild places and the vagaries of the natural world. It is a story of shipwrecks and storm surges, of cold-water surfers, sun-creased beach mums and resolute sailor’s wives. In spellbinding prose, Nors invites the reader on a journey through history and memory – the landscape’s as well as her own.

Publisher Review

'A stunning portrayal of the connection between landscape, human beings, and memory on the Danish west coast... [Dorthe Nors's] rhythm, her stillness, her humility, her ability to finish calm sentences as if they were a song... This is a masterpiece.' - Dagbladet Information 'Dorthe Nors's writing is both poetic and harsh, laconic and ironic, and with an impressionable clarity that yet always seems to be keeping secrets, hidden between sentences and words. Her prose makes its way into the landscape and the soul, which opens up and receives' - Kristeligt Dagblad 'This is a strong work of art that works on several levels. A book that pierces its way into something quintessentially Danish and Jutlandish, without ever appearing provincial, while at all times maintaining its grand outlook... It is a book you know that you will return to once you put it down' - Pov International 'Dorthe Nors is an author unlike anyone else' - Femina 'Magic... sometimes funny, sometimes chilling, always involving. This is awonderful holiday in a very fine writer's heart' - Michael Pye, author of TheEdge of the World: How the North Sea Made Us Who We Are 'A Line in the World is starkly, achingly beautiful. With stunning intimacyand precision-as attentive to tiny details in nature as she is to vast cloudlessskies - Nors shows us how places and their histories shape who we are andhow we find home.', Jessica J. Lee, author of Turning and Two Trees Makea Forest