Benny Andersen is widely recognized as a modern author who has won a large international circle of readers because he expresses his social and philosophical concerns with a kind of humor that highlights the compelling nature of his themes. The fact that his works have been translated into several languages, including English, German, Italian, Czech, Swedish, and Norwegian, illustrates the broad reception of his poetry and prose among linguistically and culturally diverse audiences.

Born 7 November 1929 to Svend Aage and Gudrun Andersen in the Copenhagen suburb of Søborg and baptized Benny Allan Andersen, he grew up during economically and politically difficult times. As a teenager he experienced the events of World War II during the German occupation of Denmark from 1940 to 1945. The tensions created by this foreign occupation and the Danish resistance to it, particularly in the Copenhagen General Strike of 1944 with its street barricades, and, subsequently...