Me, my notebook and my love of the wild and desolate. I wanted to do the opposite of what was expected of me. It's a recurring pattern in my life. An instinct. There is a line that stretches from the northernmost tip of Denmark to where the Wadden Sea meets Holland in the south-west. Dorthe Nors, one of Denmark's most acclaimed writers, is a descendant of this line; for generations, her family lived among the storm-battered trees and wind-blasted beaches of the North Sea coast. Returning after decades of inhabiting cities, she chronicles a year spent travelling up and down the coast, tracing the history and geography of the places she visits and untangling her relationship with the landscape she calls home. This is the story of the violent collisions between the people who live in these wild places and the vagaries of the natural world. It is a story of shipwrecks and storm surges, of cold-water surfers, sun-creased beach mums and resolute sailor's wives. In spellbinding prose, Nors invites the reader on a journey through history and memory - the landscape's as well as her own.

"Touchingly personal and poetic, A Line in the World . . . see[s] Nors tussle with a place brimming with memories and strangeness, where storms surge and lighthouses blink . . . fascinating." - Financial Times

"Dorthe Nors's A Line in the World is the perfect winter read, making a virtue of dark nights and frost-bitten winds on the author's native North Sea coast" - Observer

"A personal, poetic meditation on this remote edge of windswept landscapes and wild waters... immediacy and an intimacy filter through her spare, brilliant prose" - New York Times

"At its heart this is a book that will speak to anyone who has ever felt their identity being wrought in the schism between urbanism and the wilder beyond. Nors has been forged there, and her poetic, wave-tossed writing speaks of its hold." - New Statesman

"Ms. Nors is ever on the hunt for the secret seams of passion-whether from terror or jubilation-beneath the stark surface of the land and behind the faces of its button-lipped inhabitants. . . . The tone here, in Caroline Waight's translation, is gentle and considered. It has clearly been [Nors's] intention to avoid both tourist gawking and big-city condescension, and the result is both revealing and respectful. . . . Beautiful." - Wall Street Journal

"A Line in the World is... one of the first books to capture the unique region in English. In prose that is as sparse and quiet as the marshy Jutland peninsula itself, the book provides a snapshot of life in a location that is full of history and at the same time every-shifting, its future is uncertain." - Washington Post

"The first book of nonfiction from the iconoclastic Danish author... graceful, lyrical... An intricate reckoning with a world that, despite our best attempts to tame it, remains elemental and wild" - Kirkus, starred review

"Nors's portrait of her connection to a landscape both "harsh and mild" enchants" - Publishers Weekly

"Our specially commended title weaves wind and tide, experience and history, into a magical memoir of a place, a life and a culture. Dorthe Nors's A Line in the World transforms the North Sea coast of Denmark into an enchanted shoreline. Here past and present, nature and humanity, meet, in superbly evocative prose carried flawlessly into English by Caroline Waight." - Judges of the Warwick Prize for Women in Translation

"A stunning portrayal of the connection between landscape, human beings, and memory on the Danish west coast... [Dorthe Nors's] rhythm, her stillness, her humility, her ability to finish calm sentences as if they were a song... This is a masterpiece." - Dagbladet Information

"Dorthe Nors's writing is both poetic and harsh, laconic and ironic, and with an impressionable clarity that yet always seems to be keeping secrets, hidden between sentences and words. Her prose makes its way into the landscape and the soul, which opens up and receives" - Kristeligt Dagblad

"This is a strong work of art that works on several levels. A book that pierces its way into something quintessentially Danish and Jutlandish, without ever appearing provincial, while at all times maintaining its grand outlook... It is a book you know that you will return to once you put it down" - Pov International

"A languorous and evocative tour of her native Denmark . . . vivid . . . nature is at the heart of this beautiful book, framed in essay-like chapters, superbly translated by Caroline Waight." - Harpers

"Dorthe Nors is an author unlike anyone else" - Femina

"It is hard to imagine a Danish writer who could have portrayed the region in a more fascinating way. The method is poetic and candid... Nors points out that it is women's turn to put the landscape into words" - Gyldendal (Norway)

"These are texts that are so well-written and complete... Both the long history, and [Nors'] own personal story are gathered in points on the map" - Morgenbladet (Norway)

"Her unreserved love for the coastal landscape is the engine that drives the text forward... There is a seductive intimacy at stake in these encounters with nature" - Klassekampen (Norway)

"A journey in [Nors's] company is never a dull prospect... Along this mutable coast, on the border between map and myth, Nors is in her element'" - TLS

"Dorthe Nors writes so well that she can make a grain of sand become interesting. Her writing is straightforward and narrative in one moment. Deeply wistful and melancholic in the next. Self-reflecting, observant, and poetic throughout." - Aftenposten (Norway)

"A personal, poetic meditation on this remote edge of windswept landscapes and wild waters... immediacy and an intimacy filter through her spare, brilliant prose" - New York Times

"By beautifully combining facts and personal impressions, Dorthe Nors has succeeded in convincingly bringing the North Sea coast to life." - Trouw (Dutch)

"[Dorthe Nors is] an exceptional chronicler of the character, stories and sheer unashamed presence of the Jutland coast... [Nors[ walks the path between herself and the landscape perfectly" - New European

"The landscapes of Dorthe Nors's A Line in the World - a story of shipwrecks and storm surges, cold-water surfers, sun-creased beach mums and resolute sailor's wives - persist in the memory as a painterly afterglow. [...] It's also a beautifully written book. [...] Nors can fix a scene with one detail" - Caught By the River

"[Dorthe Nors] orients herself among dust and dirt, sea and sand, brilliantly capturing specks of memories which dance in the light... The hum of impending destruction is audible in each essay, magnified by Nors' aching attention to the world as we know it and have known it.. Catastrophe and opportunity go hand-in-hand, she reminds us, and our fears are conditioned by place-bound history, by the memories passed down to us." - Chicago Review of Books

"[Nors] embarks on a languorous and evocative tour of her native Denmark, from Rudbøl at the German border to Skagen at the northernmost tip. The dramas of the past are evoked not so much through individual characters as through their traces-buildings, ruins, shipwrecks-and this westerly Denmark is less the land of Hans Christian Andersen fairy tales and sleek Georg Jensen designs than a place of ancient landscapes steeped in myth. [...] nature is at the heart of this beautiful book, framed in essay-like chapters, superbly translated by Caroline Waight." - Harper's Magazine

"A masterpiece of place-based nonfiction" - On the Seawall

"Nors, writing of a place thousands miles away, makes clear that time, space and memory aren't abstract and detached from each other, but held together - the land I live on and in the land she traverses in her book." - 4Columns

"This book is beautiful and wild and seeping just like the North Sea coast landscape it's about, Dorthe's writing is soft and quiet in the best ways. [...] The writing has a rhythm and cadence to it that feels like waves coming into share and going back. Dorthe covers everything from witch effigies, to activism, to viking ships, but none of it feels forced. It's all needed and fits perfectly." - The Rumpus

"The tight bond between place and people forms the backbone of this evocative and haunting book, which reminds the reader at every turn that permanence is not promised. [...] Both celebration and elegy, this book will appeal to travelers and homebodies" - Booklist

"Each essay offers an exquisite, layered exploration of a different stretch of that wild North Sea coast, and the first one begins at the tops. [...] There are many lines in this world to contemplate in accompanying Dorthe Nors along this one, we access something of the universal in the search for identity and belonging." - Asymptote