Grete Roulund - Critics' Secret Darling

Grete Roulund - Critics' Secret Darling: Tuesday 10 November 2026, 17:00–20:00, Blågårdens Bibliotek, Copenhagen. Admission is free.

Felix Rothstein and Caroline Enghoff are librarians at Copenhagen's Libraries and literary critics for Politiken and Berlingske respectively. They share a favourite author whom few know today: Grete Roulund.

Roulund travelled the world gathering material for her novels, but wrote them a stone's throw from Blågårdens Bibliotek. The whisky-drinking, chain-smoking, leather-vest-wearing Roulund made Hemingway look like a schoolboy - her books are devilish and bleak, written with an ear for linguistic finesse and narrative tension. When she died in 2004, obituaries called her the Master of Darkness and compared her to Virgil in Dante's Inferno: a guide eagerly showing us around hell.

Gladiator Forlag reissued the rabies-thriller Black Hawk in 2018, but apart from that her books are fading into obscurity. This year Roulund would have turned 80.

At the event, Felix and Caroline discuss Roulund's life and career - from dog breeder to Denmark's Stephen King - and introduce their favourite books among her many works. The themes are downfall, epidemics, climate crisis and human evil. Free and no registration required on 10/11 at 19:00 at Blågårdens Bibliotek.