Vilhelm's Room

A Novel

By: Tove Ditlevsen, Sophia Hersi Smith - translator, Jennifer Russell - translator

Narrated by: Helen Bang

A searing final novel about the collapse of a marriage and its aftermath, by the author of the modern classic Copenhagen Trilogy.

I want to write a book about Vilhelm's room and the events which took place in it, or arose from it; those that led to Lise's death, which I have survived only so that I might write down the story of her and Vilhelm . . .

The ripples from a breakup radiate outward from the room where a married couple once loved each other, and a bizarre Lonely Hearts ad sets off a train of tragicomic events that leads to an inevitable conclusion. Vilhelm's Room, Tove Ditlevsen's final novel—published a year before her untimely death in 1976—is a powerful conclusion to an extraordinary life as a poet, novelist, and memoirist: a blackly funny and devastating tour de force that pulses with life even as it journeys toward death.

©2026 Tove Ditlevsen (P)2026 Tantor Media