The Danish Girl

For the film, see The Danish Girl (film).
The Danish Girl

First hardcover edition, 2000
Author David Ebershoff
Country United States
Language English
Genre Novel
Publisher Allen & Unwin (Australia)
Viking Press (USA)
Publication date
 2000
Media type Print (hardback & paperback)
Pages 324
ISBN 0670888087
Followed by Pasadena

The Danish Girl is a novel by American writer David Ebershoff, published in 2000 by the Viking Press in the United States and Allen & Unwin in Australia.

Summary

The novel is a fictionalized account of the life of Lili Elbe, one of the first people to undergo sex reassignment surgery.[1]

The Danish Girl, as Ebershoff stated, does not try to tell a true story. He has not only imagined most of what he wrote about Elbe's inner life, but he has also fabricated all of the other characters in the book, most important among them Wegener's blue-blooded American-born wife, Greta Waud, who like Ebershoff comes from Pasadena, California.[2] The real Gerda Wegener was Danish, but in the novel her name was changed to Greta to please the American audience.

Awards

The Danish Girl won the Rosenthal Foundation Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters and the Lambda Literary Award. It was also a finalist for the Tiptree Award, the New York Public Library's Young Lions Award, and an American Library Association Award, and was a New York Times Notable Book.

Reception

In The New York Times Book Review, novelist and critic John Burnham Schwartz called the novel "arresting": "I hope people will read 'The Danish Girl.' It is fascinating and humane."[1] Critic Richard Bernstein wrote in The New York Times, "Mr. Ebershoff is telling us that love does involve a small dark space. The intelligence and tactfulness of his exploration of it make his novel a noteworthy event."[3]

Translations

The novel has been translated into more than ten languages and is published in paperback by Penguin.

Film adaptation

The novel was adapted into a feature film directed by Tom Hooper, and starring Eddie Redmayne as Lili Elbe, Alicia Vikander as Gerda Wegener, Matthias Schoenaerts as Hans Axgil and Ben Whishaw as Henrik.[4]

References

  1. 1 2 John Burnham Schwartz, "Metamorphosis," The New York Times Book Review, February 27, 2000.
  2. ↑ "BOOKS OF THE TIMES; Radical Change and Enduring Love". The New York Times. February 14, 2000. Retrieved December 11, 2015.
  3. ↑ Richard Bernstein, "'The Danish Girl': Radical Change and Enduring Love," The New York Times, February 14, 2000. ("The historical fact is that in 1931 a Danish painter named Einar Wegener became the first man ever to be transformed surgically into a woman, changing her name to Lili Elbe and eventually leaking her story to the press. In 'The Danish Girl' David Ebershoff uses the bare facts of Wegener-Elbe's story to summon a rich imagined universe in which the main event is less the sexual transformation itself than the way that transformation affected other people.")
  4. ↑ "The Danish Girl". IMDb. Retrieved January 5, 2015.
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