Red Gate

Author Nanna Holm visits Præstø Library to discuss her acclaimed debut novel "Red Gate" - about debuting as a writer in her late forties, the moment when fictional characters begin to live their own lives, and what we can learn today from the collective way of living and being together.

The novel takes place one summer in the 1980s in a residential collective on Langeland. The adults dream big and party late, while the children drift through drowsy days and restless nights. Decades later, three childhood friends must find each other again and hold one another up against free fall.

Nanna Holm herself grew up in an environment that in many ways resembles Red Gate: "I know the children who lived through that time and that world." The novel is about children who grow up too fast, and adults who never quite escape their childhood.