Asta Olivia Nordenhof
Denmark
Asta Olivia Nordenhof, born in Copenhagen in 1988, is one of the most distinctive voices in contemporary Danish literature. She studied at the Danish Writers’ School, where she also taught from 2015 to 2022. She made her breakthrough as a poet in 2013; she is currently working on the seven-volume novel cycle Scandinavian Star – inspired by the 1990 fire disaster on the ferry of the same name.
Nordenhof’s writing revolves around love, money, the body and social vulnerability; it is often drawn from autobiographical experiences. For the first volume of the Scandinavian Star series, Geld in der Tasche, she received numerous awards, including the European Union Prize for Literature. Now Geld in der Tasche and, almost simultaneously, the second volume, Das Teufelsbuch, have finally been published in German.
Both novels powerfully intertwine individual human destinies with the structures of capital and responsibility. At the heart of the narrative are relationships that begin to fray under economic pressure. Nordenhof tells her story through fragmentary, poetically condensed scenes that elude any linear narrative tension and instead weave a web of voices and perspectives. Die Zeit was impressed, how here “intimacy and systemic critique are inextricably intertwined” – quiet, haunting literature about love in the shadow of money.
Das Teufelsbuch. Novel. Claassen 2026
Geld in der Tasche. Novel. Claassen 2026
Available in English:
The Easiness and the Loneliness. Poems. Open Letter 2018
Back...
