Author Talk: Mich Vraa on "I Am Not Cathrine"

Librarian Karen-Margrethe Revsbæk talks with Mich Vraa about his latest novel "I Am Not Cathrine", which draws on the life of Agnes von Kurowsky - from her childhood in Alaska's wilderness, through her work as a nurse in war- and crisis-torn regions, to her final years in Key West.

The connection to literary history is well-known: the young Hemingway met Agnes von Kurowsky when he was a Red Cross ambulance driver in northern Italy during World War I. She was seven years older and worked as a nurse. The meeting left its mark on his breakthrough novel "A Farewell to Arms" from 1929, where Agnes became the British nurse Catherine Barkley.

By that time, Agnes von Kurowsky had lost contact with Hemingway. She read the novel and was initially flattered - but the fictional Catherine began to haunt her over time. When tour guides in Key West started pointing her out as a kind of attraction, she left the home she had lived in for fifteen years.

Mich Vraa has an extensive body of work behind him and has translated a number of books, including works by Hemingway. He achieved popular breakthrough with "Hope", the first book in the trilogy about the West Indian islands. The event takes place in the Hall at Roskilde Library.