Karate Chop (Kantslag): Stories
Dorthe NorsThese fifteen compact stories are meticulously observed glimpses of everyday life that expose the ominous lurking under the ordinary. While his wife sleeps, a husband prowls the Internet, obsessed with female serial killers; a bureaucrat tries to reinvent himself, exposing goodness as an artifice when he converts to Buddhism in search of power; a woman sits on the edge of the bed where her lover lies, attempting to locate a motive for his violence within her own self-doubt.
Shifting between moments of violence (real & imagined) & mundane contemporary life, these stories encompass the complexity of human emotions, our capacity for cruelty as well as compassion. Not so much minimalist as stealthy, Karate Chop delivers its blows with an understatement that shows a master at work.
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Dorthe Nors is the author of the story collection Wild Swims; 4 novels, including Mirror, Shoulder, Signal, a finalist for the Man Booker International Prize; & two novellas, collected in So Much for That Winter. She lives in Denmark. Nors was born in 1970 & holds a degree in literature & art history from the University of Aarhus. She is the author of the novels “Soul” (2001), “Stormesteren” (2003) & “Ann Lie” (2005) & in 2008 she published a collection of short stories entitled “Kantslag” (Karate Chop). In 2010 Nors published “Dage” (Days); a novella, & after that came the novella Minna needs rehearsal space (Minna mangler et øvelokale), 2013. The novel Mirror, Shoulder, Signal was published in 2016, & in 2017 it was a Man Booker International Prize finalist. Short stories paved the way for her international success.