The Dolls

Selected excerpts from reviews in the Danish Press

The Dolls is grotesque, darkly humorous, and above all beautifully written. Scavenius is entirely her own. Her prose is driven by sensation and atmosphere, and although she has literary predecessors, her work stands apart from almost everything else being written in Denmark today.

— Politiken

These stories are meticulously crafted, unsettling, and uncompromising in their refusal to explain themselves. They read like testimonies from people who do not themselves understand what is happening. Scavenius's dystopian fiction recalls both historical crimes and contemporary crises and is impossible to put down.

— Information

Scavenius's language draws the reader into a floating, dream-like state, making the reading experience both disturbing and strangely beautiful.

— Litteratursiden

This is a universe painted in muted grey tones. It is all-consuming and strangely contagious; even a space car can appear without the reader raising an eyebrow. A thread of ethical and moral collapse runs through the collection. Dramatic, unsettling and superbly written.

— POV International

Because of Scavenius's distinctive style, these allegorical narratives become almost claustrophobically intimidating. The longer the stories remain trapped in their dark morass, the more intensely the reader experiences that same confinement. The title story is especially haunting, though all four linger long after the final page.

— Weekendavisen

Reading Scavenius often makes you question what it is we actually share in what we call reality. The strange and the ordinary speak the same language. Her prose, drawing on writers such as Kafka and Poe, is a quiet but powerful challenge to our certainty about the world and about what it means to be human.

— Danish Arts Foundation

Together, the four stories create a powerful and deeply relevant portrait of human folly. They insist that the catastrophes of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries are not behind us but remain part of our present. The Dolls is beautifully written discomfort.

— Standart

There is something of Bruno Schulz in these uncanny realities. The four stories create an almost post-apocalyptic landscape whose atmosphere is at once terrifying and utterly convincing. Exile becomes the collection's emotional ground tone, sustained by prose of remarkable force and originality.

— Asger Schnack

Reviews in the English-Language Press

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

— Katrine Øgaard Jensen

Reviews in the Swedish Press

Scavenius challenges conventional ideas of narrative itself. She works with confusion as an aesthetic principle and strengthens her position as one of Scandinavia's genuinely innovative prose writers. It takes courage to write with such freedom while trusting the reader to follow.

— Bernur (Sweden)