Virginia by Jens Christian Grøndahl

Translated from the Danish by Anne Born

• Copenhagen Central Library, Denmark

It is 1942 and Denmark is occupied by German troops. A young woman is invited to spend the summer with people she barely knows in a cottage on the North Sea coast. There she meets two people who will affect her entire life: a fourteen-year-old boy who is the nephew of her hosts, and an English airman who is shot down over the marshlands nearby. The girl becomes entranced by the pilot and devotes all her energies towards keeping him hidden but when the boy discovers this secret he commits a deplorable act of treachery.
Fifty years later an elderly man receives a package through the post containing a cigarette case which seems to have belonged to the pilot he met that summer. The letter is from the girl that he had adored. As he looks back on it all, he asks himself whether his youthful desire gave way to an unforgivable betrayal.

Virginia is a sensitive, deeply moving story about the intricacies of relationships.

Jens Christian Grøndahl, born in 1959, is one of Denmark's leading writers. He has written twelve novels, two collections of essays and several plays. His fiction has been translated into sixteen languages and he has been the recipient of numerous awards including the Booksellers' Golden Laurels for Lucca. He is a former Chairman of PEN in Denmark.