Virtual Book Talk

A Postcard to Annie. On July 13, acclaimed Danish author Ida Jessen joins us with translator Martin Aitken for a virtual discussion on the new book A Postcard for Annie. With moderator Désirée Ohrbeck, they’ll discuss the writing and translation of the prizewinning anthology hailed as an “insightful, original collection” (Kirkus Reviews) following the inner lives of several women on the brink, or sidelines, of catastrophe.From the winner of the Lifetime Award from the Danish Arts Foundation and the 2017 Critics’ Choice Award, Ida Jessen’s A Postcard for Annie traces the tangled emotional lives of women facing moral dilemmas. A young woman witnesses a terrible accident with unexpected consequences; a mother sits with her unconscious son in a hospital room; a pair of sisters remember their mother’s hands braiding their hair. In seaside tourist villages and in snowy cities, turbulence destabilizes composed lives, whether through outright violence between strangers or habitual domination between loved ones.

Writing with the same narrative generosity, Jessen fills each story with bracing passages that splash with the living world, only to become concentrated in the unfixed, vacillating matter of a human psyche caught between silence and speech, paralysis and action.

A Postcard for Annie will be available beginning June 28 from Archipelago. This event will take place as a Zoom webinar; please ask questions in the chat or send them in advance to info@amscan.org. Registration is required; please sign up at the link.