The Dolls
by Ursula Scavenius

published on Lolli editions 2021!

Lolli editions. Rights: Copenhagen literary agency

Translated from the Danish by Jennifer Russell

Thanks for support from he Danish Art Foundation

Shortlisted for the Edvard P. Prize 2020

Part of Books from Denmarks 2020

“The Dolls” is Editor’s Pick på BBC4 - Open book

Book of the month in november at Republic of Consciousness

Praise for The Dolls

“Here is a writer of extremely unusual imaginative powers. I found myself completely entranced. This is one of the most extraordinary pieces of writing I've ever read.”

– Editor’s Pick Open Book, BBC Radio 4

Listen at 23.30: https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m00100cr?fbclid=IwAR1Rm5_oQqFV-DN8b2e7Bpf9m1YEjElxJxEhd9rtIhDq5ObNCcbRpeFW4xI

Or listen at:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/3wij22svosmx8g3/BBC_TheDolls.m4a?dl=0

“From a Rear Window-like position, a girl in a wheelchair watches extremely sinister happenings at a refugee centre with her complicit parents while her sister refuses to leave the basement of their house. A woman seeks refuge from the ever-present threat of war or the chaos of climate change with a man whose identity is as unclear as his intentions… These are artful, singular stories which, with rigorous inventiveness of language and technique, vividly evoke the calamities that form our nightmares.”

– The Irish Times

“Fiercely anti-establishment and addictively macabre. The translation is appropriately atmospheric: Jennifer Russell has done a marvellous job of weaving the narrative seamlessly between an almost dreamlike lyricism and a grisly reality.”

– Translating Women

"Generally in quite a lot of short story collections, you prefer one story over the other but I absolutely adored each and every story because all of them are extremely strong, independent stories and doing their own things."

- Allaying Art -Literature and cinema

“A dilute wash of watercolour exposes the terrifying images and themes underneath… Emerging from Scavenius’ world, we recognise the cruelty and threat and bewilderment as not only the domain of the world she’s writing from, but also a powerful and poetic compression of where we live.”

– Tom Conaghan, Exacting Clam
https://www.exactingclam.com/issues/no-2-autumn-2021/ursula-scavenius-emthe-dollsem/

“Scavenius’s book is filled with impressive observation and uncomfortable characters, all bound together by her peculiarnand gritty prose, beautifully told in Russell’s immaculate translation.”

– Asymptote

“The story Compartment reminded me of Guy de Maupassant crossed with Kafka: Three siblings have to carry their dead mother with them on a train heading out of Russia and towards Hungary so that they find a decent burial area.”

“These stories have a realistic edge, which makes the reader empathise with the characters. I will say that I wanted the three siblings to succeed in their mission and shared in their desperation. I was sharing the narrator’s curiosity when seeing his cellar bound sister’s nails. I felt the unease the narrator had about Notpla. Despite the darkness The Dolls’ is very human in scope.”

– The Bobsphere

“Ursula Scavenius is one of the most exciting Danish short story writers at work today. The Dolls, in Jennifer Russell's magnificent translation, is a literary page-turner: haunting, mesmerizing, and unforgettable in all its grotesque glory.”

– Katrine Øgaard Jensen

“A universe in which everything is painted forth in grey, muted strokes. It is contagious and all-consuming; even a space car can appear without the reader raising an eyebrow. A silver thread of ethical and moral degradation runs through the entire collection, all fig leaves are burnt, and humankind cannot escape its responsibility of having destroyed the world. Dramatic, hysterical, and supremely well-written.”

– POV International

“Because of the Scavenian style and method, these allegorical sets become effectively and thoroughly, almost claustrophobically, intimidating. The more and the longer the narrative gets stuck into its dark morass, the more diabolical the reader experiences their own confinement, and they become desperate about not being able nor willing to escape, all because of the very power of fascination.”

– Weekendavisen

”Scavenius’s language draws the reader into a floating, dream-like state, making the reading experience disturbingly beautiful.”

– Litteratursiden

“Skilfully crafted and shocking stories that are uncompromising in their insistence on describing without explaining. Or put differently: the stories feel like testimonies from people who do not themselves understand what is going on. Scavenius’s dystopian narratives are hard to put down, recalling both historical crimes and current crises.”

– Information

“The Dolls is grotesque, a little bit humorous and above all, very well-written. Scavenius is her very own thing, her prose is carried by sensations and moods. Although she is not without predecessors, it is truly spectacular that Scavenius’s books are so unlike other Danish works being written today.”

– Mikkel Krause Frantzen, Politiken

“When you read Scavenius you often and suddenly have doubts about whether you can ever truly share an experience with someone else in that place we call reality. Scavenius writes like that! Here, the weird and the ordinary speak the same language. Her beautiful prose, which draws not only on the traditions of Kafka and Poe, but also on M.R. James, Henry James, Arthur Machen, Astrid Ehrencron-Kidde and others, is a quiet but powerful attack on the security we have in life that all too often keeps us from asking the most relevant questions about being human.”

– Danish Arts Foundation

Among great Goodreads …

"These stories are as unsettling, fearless and uncompromising as the great literature of our times should be. The Dolls is absolutely astonishing and Ursula Scavenius a modern master."

Chiara Liberio rated it ***** it was amazing

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/56605286-the-dolls

“…strange mode of oblique dramatic inquiry into our default Western negative theological worldview, which reminds me of Kafka, Schulz, Kundera... In 'The Dolls, Ursula Scavenius excavates a Mitteleuropa literary sculpture park and casts the greats in a new light with a new shadow.

Matt T rated it ***** it was amazing

From Lolli editions:

The dolls consists of stories from a world both fantastically strange and gruellingly familiar where isolation, ruin, prejudice, and misinformation soar in an irresistible, susurrant fugue of displaced families yearning to belong. In the four stories that make up The Dolls, characters are plagued by unexplained illnesses and oblique, human-made disasters and environmental losses. A big sister descends into the family basement. Another sister refuses her younger brother. A third sister with memory loss is on the run and offered shelter by Notpla, a man both an ally and an enemy. A fourth set of siblings travel to Hungary with their late mother in a coffin. They each have a different version of their mother’s story. Drawing on the likes of August Strindberg, Franz Kafka, Andrej Kurkov, Knut Hamsun, T.S. Eliot, Béla Tarr, and Hieronymus Bosch, Scavenius’s universe is chilling and excruciatingly seductive. In it, nothing can be said to be true anymore. After all, anything can be propaganda today.
Neil Griffiths talks about the book. He is one of the forces behind the new Weatherglass Books and maker of Republic of Conscious! And he says among other: “Here is a writer of extremely unusual imaginative powers. I found myself completely entranced.” Listen at 23.30! https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m00100cr

Publication 21 October 2021
Description 198 × 129 mm, 144 pages, Softcover Original
ISBN 978-1-9999928-4-2
Design Laura Silke