A Line in the World

“Dorthe Nors’s writing is both poetic and harsh, laconic and ironic . . . Her prose makes its way into the landscape and the soul.”—Kristeligt Dagblad

“[Nors’s] 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.”—Morgenbladet

“A stunning portrayal of the connection between landscape, human beings, and memory on the Danish west coast . . . [Nors’s] rhythm, her stillness, her humility . . . This is a master­ piece.”—Dagbladet Information

“A revelation. In 14 eloquent, observant essays that combine journalism, nature writing and memoir, Nors paints a vivid portrait of a remote and rugged territory whose striking scenery masks more than its share of dangers . . . A Line in the World will appeal to a wide audience of discerning and curious readers.”—Shelf Awareness

“Dorthe Nors is one of those rare authors—like Sebald—who can bring a place to the page so that you forget the outside world while reading. And there are lines of such astonishing beauty in this book that I find myself circling back to them like landmarks in their own right.”—Tanya Shadrick

“Dorthe Nors’s first nonfiction draws a beautiful, delicate line into which swims time, space, place, borders and what it means to belong. A deep dive into a coastal landscape, both breathtaking and hypnotic, it is a journey towards your own heart and what it means to truly belong.”—Natasha Carthew, author of Undercurrent: A Cornish Memoir of Poverty, Nature and Resilience

“These masterful essays give a strong, personal, and moving portrait of a landscape and of a mind—about loneliness, memory and belonging, in wind and waves, time, place. The light flowing through Nors’s writing is breathtaking; it is hypnotic, consoling.”—Gunnhild Øyehaug, author of Present Tense Machine

“A beautiful, melancholy account of finding home on a restless coast. In Dorthe Nors’s deft hands, the sea is no longer a negative space, but a character in its own right. I loved it.”—Katherine May, author of Wintering: The Power of Rest and Retreat in Difficult Times

“A Line in the World is starkly, achingly beautiful. With stunning intimacy and precision—as attentive to tiny details in nature as she is to vast cloudless skies—Dorthe Nors shows us how places and their histories shape who we are and how we find home.”—Jessica J. Lee, author of Turning and Two Trees Make a Forest

“Lyrical, luminescent, and yet rigorously concrete, Dorthe Nors’s keen understanding of the intricacies of place and the tensions inherent in attachment make the Danish coast come to life. I loved seeing this landscape through her eyes, but most of all I loved the inheritance of observation, experience, and beauty contained within this volume.”—Alexandra Kleeman, author of Something New Under the Sun

“You need real nerve to gaze unfaltering at the sea, and to walk untremblingly along the high creaking edges of the land, and life, and ideas. Nors is one of the very rare writers with that nerve, and it is spectacularly displayed in this taut, uncompromising, glittering book. Most of us are dangerously content with the appearance of things. If that's you, don't read this book, which cuts straight to the heart.”—Charles Foster, author of A Little Brown Sea and Being a Beast

“This is not a book: it is magic, like wandering in the mind of somebody in love. Dorthe Nors loves the coast of the North Sea and the Wadden Sea, it is her land, and her beautifully exact writing seems simple until you smell the salt and seaweed; then you know she’s taken you there. She tells the stories of fisher widows, storm and surge, seals as beings parallel to humans, even the glamorous surfers of Cold Hawaii. It must be true love because she can play with everything she so sharply observes and make it sometimes funny, sometimes chilling, always involving. This a wonderful holiday in a very fine writer’s heart.”—Michael Pye, author of The Edge of the World: How the North Sea Made Us

“A Line in the World is less a collection of essays than a confluence of eons, of feeling, of inarticulable precision—and it pulled me under. Dorthe Nors writes with the cool might of the North Atlantic tide, coasting from naval hubris and a dwindling, seaside matriarchy to geological phenomena and modern displacement. Such scope and focus is a feat, an occurrence of those poignant, silty histories which only an artist of Nors's caliber can catch.”—Jakob Guanzon, author of Abundance

“[A] luminous set of reflections . . . An intricate reckoning with a world that, despite our best attempts to tame it, remains elemental and wild.”—Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

“[A] poetic chronicle of her time spent along Denmark’s North Sea coast . . . Nors’s portrait of her connection to a landscape both ‘harsh and mild’ enchants.”—Publishers Weekly