When Death Takes Something from You Give It Back: Carl's Book - Hardcover

by Naja Marie Aidt (Author), Denise Newman (Translator)

An unflinchingly raw and lyrical exploration of a mother's grief and how it transforms her relationship to time, reality, and language.
Longlisted for the 2019 National Book Award for Translation

In March 2015, Naja Marie Aidt's twenty-five-year-old son, Carl, died in a tragic accident. When Death Takes Something from You Give It Back chronicles the few first years after that devastating phone call. It is at once a sober account of life after losing a child and an exploration of the language of poetry, loss, and love.

Intensely moving, When Death Takes Something from You Give It Back explores what is it to be a family, what it is to love and lose, and what it is to treasure life in spite of death's indomitable resolve.

Author Biography

Naja Marie Aidt was born in Greenland and raised in Copenhagen. She is the author of eleven collections of poetry, a novel, and three short story collections, including Baboon, which won the 2008 Nordic Council Literature Prize, Scandinavia's highest literary honor. Her work has been translated into sixteen languages.

Denise Newman is a translator and poet who has published four collections of poetry. She has translated two books by Denmark's Inger Christensen. Her translation of Naja Marie Aidt's short story collection Baboon won the 2015 PEN Translation Prize.