Netflix has made a movie

Danish bestseller published by Graz publishing house

"Hunger" (26 euros, 400 pages) is the third novel by Tine Høeg to be published by Droschl-Verlag in Graz.(Bild: Krone KREATIV/Laerke Posselt/Droschl Verlag)

The third translation by Danish author Tine Høeg was recently published by Droschl-Verlag in Graz. "Hunger" is a sensitive diary of a woman with an unfulfilled desire to have children. The film adaptation "A Copenhagen Love Story" will be released on Netflix on February 26.

What the mid-30-year-old Copenhagen writer Mia feels is like hunger: an animalistic, irrepressible need. Mia wants a child. So does her partner Emil - but it doesn't work.

"Hunger" is the diary of a woman undergoing fertility treatment. She injects hormones, has eggs retrieved, goes to acupuncture and worries about her husband's sperm. She has sex, even if she has to force herself. She bears the responsibility, carries the burden.

The female body, a prison
Høeg (translation: Gerd and Ingrid Weinreich) finds a particularly empathetic tone for the apparent contradictions in Mia's life, for example when she takes care of her friend Gro after her abortion. Høeg deliberately uses metaphors from feminist literary history, such as Sylvia Plath's "Glass Bell": the female body, motherhood, prison and liberation at the same time. "Hunger" takes up a topic that is (still) rarely dealt with in literature and is also always a plea for freedom of choice.

Although it is 400 pages long, "Hunger" reads quickly and develops a real pull. The author hurls raw, seemingly unfiltered thoughts onto the pages, and yet you keep pausing to let them sink in: "Am I writing too much about unhappiness? There is happiness too," she says at one point, or: "and we should be overwhelmed by love and everything should bloom". 

On Wednesday, February 26, the film adaptation of the novel, originally published in 2022, celebrates its premiere on Netflix: "A Copenhagen Love Story".