That's Ishan at $87.00 of. The company that owns the British flag tanker seized by Iran says 22 of its 23 crew members have met officials from their embassies in Tehran the Stener Imperio was taken last Friday and is now docked in the port of Bandar about us its Swedish owner Stana bulk says the Indian Russian and Filipino crewman had all been visited by embassy officials that FIA has no embassy in Iran but has been monitoring the welfare of its national standard bulk said the crew were in good health and spirits Well news from the b.b.c. . Hello and welcome to World Book cafe on the b.b.c. World Service that means you're going to spend the next hour or so kind of around a table with writing talent in our chosen city we're going to be reading arguing recommending and getting a portrait of Copenhagen indeed welcome to Denmark's capital a 1000000 people in a country of 6000000 small capital small country small language with at least one word famous around the world who you can find it in nearly a 1000 books eager to explain this renowned concept of a cozy trusting sense of belonging that epitomizes Danish happiness we can't come to Denmark and not talk about happiness it always comes top of those global indexes but of course nowhere is perfect there are contradictions and complications and surely that's got to be good for writers Let's meet our panel daughter Norse widely translated one of the best known contemporary Danish writers she had the 1st Danish short story published in The New Yorker what took him so long you might ask your honesty bring some who will be giving you a description of I suppose off grid almost underground Copenhagen that is a lot deeper than what you'll find in your usual Nordic nor are we have the hard to describe Russian editor teacher writer former journalist with insights actually from the 22nd century and acclaimed young author and award winner Caroline Albertine Minogue Please join me in welcoming our panel back in. And that was our audience here in the splendid surroundings of books and company in the Copenhagen suburb of headed up panel before we go any further out like you to share a place a favorite literary spot that you associate with the city closest to me Caroline what would you describe I thought about it and they chose a cemetery I've been fascinated with cemetery. As for quite some time I wrote my bachelor thesis on it and there is one close to me which is called assistance and it is unique in the sense that it is really both a cemetery and a park so next to tombstones and graves of all kinds there are people making out more this with prams than Frisbees and. I really like this mix and then I like to walk there when I'm frustrated with my work which is at the moment quite often so yeah I love that place thank you often seen a cemetery near. Uranus I like the lakes and the small small cities as opposed to just called the lakes because those are the lakes incoming and I like walking there with a friend it's a nice place and and in the middle of the city but it's so kind of quiet. I actually thought about a cold will be bad it's not even not my favorite place but if you wanted to like see some of the nice authors in the wild Maybe you should go to a book about small I think it's over 100 years old and it's located just next to the big publishing house called Google which is also like 300 years old and a lot of writers when they're still there they're drunk but I think you have to go there if you have want to have like you know an impression of Copenhagen's literary scene you see not only a literary recommendation but so much to drink as well thank you those are our native Copenhagen as at the end daughter Norse not a native garden I get we lived it then you don't live here anymore you have a difficult relationship with Copenhagen what would you choose Oh I love my capital and I actually Carlina said the cemeteries and that was also on the top of my list because it's a very special thing a in Copenhagen that we live with the earth but now I can't take it. One because you target so when I live here I live very close to the park of spare garden and because I crave landscapes which is one of the problems I had with living in the city I often went there so I spend a lot of hours walking around in flex back garden sort of picturing it being in a huge landscape when I need to escape from city life and it's a beautiful place thank you so much for great postcards giving us a little bit of a taste if we're talking literary Copenhagen the giant figure I suppose of the outside world is h. C. Anderson Hans Christian Andersen to English people like me and his fairy tales we're now going to talk about a fairy tale because it's a title of a novel by one of our panel by us. And it gives a very particular version of the city a story briefly I found it beautiful as a son observing his father and he tells of their lives together and they exist in a kind of unofficial world on the margins of respectable Danish life now you're is how well do you know these alternative places that you take us to I think I have always been attracted to these places because I have always felt like a bit of and outsider I've always had the idea that it would be much more likely for me to end up an addict learned then like actually running my own business of being successful so. I kind of know these environments from. Actively seeking them out because people do that if they feel they belong there are more than on like main stream. And of course what happens is that it what emerges is almost a kind of like a parallel an unofficial Copenhagen an unofficial life I love the idea of that I still do this is in the ninety's Nowadays it would be much harder were credit cards but back then I like the idea that you could live like a pitch. You could live off of scraps from from society not necessarily unlike the underbelly of society more like parallel like picking up little pieces you know just where you just read an extract Yes This is from Chapter 2. We're sitting in the Can my dad has borrowed from a family with angry man she darks Yont everything we own is on the back seat in the boot it's about time we turn to Copenhagen my dancers you were born in Copenhagen did you know that he rolls down the window as he turns the handle the white station wagon rattles and creaks as if it's about to fall apart when he finds a hand rolled cigarette in the breast pocket of his denim jacket. He drums as fingers on the steering wheel blows a smoke out of the corner of his mouth and removes a fragment of tobacco from his lower lip is always happy when we move and he laughs a lot. We drive past tall concrete buildings there are cars all around us the motorway and the houses get lower we could be anywhere it looks like in many of the places where we've lived before places was supermarkets and hairdressers I close my eyes and nearly fall asleep we've been driving since the morning I 1st I see white rings than flashing lights on the inside of my eyelids I'm gunna moment perhaps a longer my dad's voice brings me back to the car we're here he says and I open my eyes. And another thing that's interesting about it is that a lot of that kind of gritty place is so over known through while writing and the crime writing which is so popular so it's kind of quite dangerous your going to the same places but you have to make them yours don't you that is what it is all about I mean I mean I've always been attracted to Noah but I'm really not that interested in real life but but I have found that real life is so much more effective and juicy. Then whatever I could make up that's why you do your research if you could make stuff up that was just as good on your own you probably never would leave your house but you just can't so you have to to go out there and scavenge and talk to people. Thank you Olga we're going to spring forward to the 23 now and but before that I want to know what the writer's life is like here this is a lovely warm event you are amongst friends I think I could say goodnight Is that what is that what your life is all there is a series of these nice occasions no. I think my life as a writer has changed a lot I made my debut in 2012 but for the last maybe 18 months I've been only writing on writing right so right now I'm actually very lonely. And I think that's also a part of writer's life and I don't actually know what a practical part of being a writer is I think that's a lot of different things I'm not a practical person but you see when you work when you are training to be a writer do they prepare you for this they might teach you how to write a sentence how to put the table together you know in carpentry terms I think actually the tried to prepare me but they prepared me for a life that was not mine. Yes I think actually that I was taught that I had to have this like very wired to hear me and live to be a good. And that's not me at all I like television. And I tried living that life didn't make me a bit a writer at all the school where you were you studied Caroline you also studied there as well do they prepare you for life living in the city being a writer you know I agree with Olga and I think one of the reasons is that many of our teachers were men oh. I would have to say I remember one of my teachers going so you have you never written anything wild really drunk and I said no well get started. And that was kind of the vibe there a writer some years ago about how experiences do some interesting and. Then I got pregnant and I'm. And how how important for literary Copenhagen is for example going and training in that manner in a sort of a creative writing manner in that school it's well there is just well there was for some time one school called for fed us gone but now I have the sense that there are a lot of smaller schools and to different yeah yeah like and is it necessary you think to enter that world I think I worked as an editor at a big publishing house called Couldn't they and I began there in 2014 and I quit in maybe a year ago and I think that when I was there was there was an obvious shift because when I was hired if you went to fed a school your manuscript would go into the top of the panel it would not necessarily become a book but people were interested and a lot of new schools opened and a lot of new authors ships had very strong books that were not from there and it actually changed to when I left in 2018 it was not like that at all why not is it going online has it changed I think that maybe if I have to be a little harsh that some of the aesthetics there just grew old and that some very strong books and authors ships become for me it's where they come from something and something else where a lot of new schools are opening up now they're not a monopoly anymore and people study in Sweden they study no way and that was actually very good for the books and for the literature because a lot of different voices and different standards came more central to the literature let me ask about your novel I'll just try to explain it as I can before before we get a bit of a reading from all that is called the employees it's set in the 22nd century as I've already said it's a series of witness statements they're the crew of a spacecraft some of them are humans some of them humanoids give us a witness statement. This is from the end of the book where everybody knows that. I'm God I'm just going to spoil it. Everybody knows that they're going to be hit with like some sort of radiation they don't know what it is but they keep turning in these witness statements witness statement 164 I really appreciate you staying here and talking to us it's hard to see what we do otherwise the workflows that a complete standstill now everyone's aware of what's coming but no one knows what to do with themselves people are going around in limbo they can't understand the time is running out it is generous of you carrying out your work until the last it's more than you can say for most of us I've observed that a lot of my humanoid coworkers have started uploading every hour their faces glistening with sweat and I realize they're nervous compared to us they've got nothing to lose and yet they're still scared of losing what little they've got to remember I'd like to send a message home if that's possible I don't know if anyone still lives there my message is what should I say. Earth can no longer be seen from the 6th out and ship I've forgotten how long you've been here now were you here when we lost visual contact with home base. I was sitting in the Panorama room just staring at the planet for weeks it had been getting smaller and smaller it was happy bigger than a stare I stared intensely I knew it was a matter of minutes and then suddenly I couldn't pick it out any more and more and all the other stars it was just a white dot I have no idea where to look for it now. Science fiction is that a big thing here you know why did you choose to go that. I have 2 answers I can do a superficial answer and I can do it like an existential answer what do you want right when we should take a vote. Go on be existential for us I love that I think that I really need to read in order to like exist to live and if every time I would go to a book or to a form I would feel like it couldn't hold me I would love to read like a realistic novel with a 3rd person narrator but each time I go to that book and try to read that book it just it can't hold me so what I realized was that I have to go in the outskirts of the literary history in the outskirts of Shanghai and then suddenly the door opens and you go shared with myself I want to write a normal book and it's not possible and then I have to go around and find where can I get in and science fiction was a shower that to me just opened itself up like in a beautiful way I had all this from read science fiction but I didn't really have the curate's to write it because it's not how do you see it's not good taste. Then it was just wonderful for me to write it and I brought it in like a month so it was liberating yes to write without an audience in mind exactly any of you other guys do you do you find yourself daughter do you find yourself limited by what you think people expect you to write or do you write with someone in mind that way never you should never be limited by what you think people want to do you should you should always follow your voice and one of the things that I find very important for writers is that we break the form now and then and try to push ourselves into other forms friends and science fiction or if you are really good at writing novels try writing a drama or something I mean try to sort of push the form because it makes you better at what you can to make your instrument better let's talk about poetry actually here in the audience we have always someone Hendrickson who is here at the microphone will come to you in just a minute Louise until very recently you were editing an online poetry magazine now would you say that Copenhagen is a noisy city for poetry is there a lot going on there is definitely something going on yeah a lot of voices coming out from everywhere I see a lot of noise especially on the Internet a lot of people are being published in online poetry poetry magazines or just soft publishing on Instagram like popping up here and there has stuff migrated online do you still have the classic you know the small publication the small periodical The Journal or has it all gone online you know no we still have we still have printed one with a very strong history magazine called The Corner that has been around for her for many years I think some of you have been you know yeah you have again you have Yeah that has a very strong tradition and I know also be to be I mustn't miss King for break you have also recently been in at least one guy and you 2 so there are still. Print Print things going on but also very much internet and it is it is it something that still excites you think it is definitely very happening a lot. We're in Copenhagen you took a break from Copenhagen and there is a great line in your book when the heroine Sonia who has come to make it in Copenhagen she says all of a sudden it stopped making sense and so she then leaves and goes back to this huge landscape which I hope you can tell us a bit about which is where you live now how does a city make sense and stop making sense what we're getting at. I think when I wrote that book which is Mira shoulda signal I think so what about all the people in Denmark who had been forced to move to big cities because the road Denmark couldn't give them what they wanted they had potentials they had to move and it was sort of a east bound movement in Denmark if you came from raw journal and you would go to all who was and if you were from all you would go to Copenhagen and so forth so you had to urbanize yourself and the problem was that when you grew up in a big landscape that landscape becomes a body and a conscience to you it's like a being in your in itself and then some children connect really strongly to that and then they have to up root themselves so there's sort of a family member the landscape itself is lost to you and can the cityscape not work or not this is why we always go to cemeteries and parks near the people who really need that we have that craving for the landscape we have to escape to parks and cemeteries because there is silence and because there is a sort of a glimpse of what could be a horizon or or an oasis in the noise and that is what I did when I was here I'd sort of withdrew all the time into the pseudo landscape of the city so the city is a landscape in itself. But it's just not a very silent landscape daughter you mention there a generation being we need a little bit of sort of Danish history background here but sort of being up rooted and moving is that something that most people are familiar with that most people are one generation from the plough as we would say or yeah I would say so I mean most Danas have if you go back a few generations were from the countries and had far more blood and because of the interest industrialization they moved to the bigger cities and and right now like it is in most of your battles in the States and it's like the rural country side is being drained from people and drained from talent and drained from young people and yet you live there what's it like where you are a loser because it's so immensely beautiful and you must remember that I mean writers are doing research everywhere and you should be courageous and if you're not a courageous writer you're not a writer you have to put yourself out there into an uncomfortable silence I mean you know when as goes to places in Copenhagen where I as a good woman would be scared to go but he does that because you have to put yourself out there and see what did happen and you don't have to stay there forever but take now while you're there that's something there's I think that that I think as we as like a species we definitely need the quiet I love the way you to describe the countryside it makes me want to move there insincerely but I would go absolutely crazy if you were I would and I think it has to do with we need the quiet but also we need the nice Actually I think we spent maybe the 1st 30 to 40 years of our lives trying to escape where we came from and getting away from where we came from and for the rest of our lives we're trying to return to where we came from and to who we were came from the suburbs. I moved to the not so nice part of the city lived there 20 years I moved back to the suburbs a couple of years ago we can write about ourselves we can write about a fictional family the place where we grew up the city the countryside the friends we had when we was 7 I think there's definitely this whole thing about going out and then we turning and