Dorothy, a publishing project

At a conference somewhere in Europe, Maja meets the Author. Haunted by a recent tragedy, she leaves with him unexpectedly to his home on the Italian coast, where she stays for a time, wandering into the rhythms of his life, observing the landscape through the lens of his days—the glossy floors of the Esselunga supermarket, open windows on the autostrada, the sea. Yet everywhere over their new and tender intimacy hangs the knowledge that soon she will have to return home to Copenhagen, site of her devastating loss.

A penetrating new voice among contemporary Danish innovators like Olga Ravn and Solvej Balle, Denise Rose Hansen paints with spare, deft lyricism a whole world of grief and yearning.

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“This slim novel should be read slowly because on every page there is a treasure: a strange thought that strikes like an arrow to the heart of a target, a surprising observation that nevertheless rings perfectly true, a discreet metaphor that seems to have been created for the first time. Hansen is so delicate, so singular, and so precise, that it seems as if she has only ever read the greatest poets.” —Anne Serre, author of A Leopard-Skin Hat

“Blue Sunset streams onto the page in layers or sheets or waves, the emotional weather of the novel meeting the formations of sky, land, and sea. Sublime and inscrutable. In mourning, but alive.” —Amina Cain, author of A Horse at Night