Hanne Marie Svendsen is one of the leading Danish women authors of the 1980s and 1990s. She has published seven novels, two collections of short stories, two plays for television, poetry, and three books for children. In addition to fiction, Svendsen has excelled in several other genres, publishing literary history and criticism, interviews with modern Danish novelists, and autobiographical works and editing poetry anthologies and other collections. She is recognized as a modern Danish master of the literary movement known as magic realism; her work might be compared to that of her contemporaries Peter Høeg and Ib Michael. Above all, Svendsen's strength as a writer is her ability to create enthralling stories. Her books feature eccentric characters and even ghosts, who love, suffer, and die on islands, at sea, or during voyages. Writing about boats and water is natural to her, as she grew up near...