Montana's Literary Award 2022 - A tribute to Danish literature

Join us in celebrating the best Danish literature from the past year at the awards ceremony for Montana's Literary Award 2022.

Each year, a number of authors are nominated for Montana's Literary Award. This evening you can get up close to the year's best Danish literature when the nominated authors read from their works before the winner of the award is revealed.

Innovative contribution to the literature

With Montana's Literary Award, the Royal Danish Library, Montana Furniture and Dagbladet Information has teamed up to celebrate Danish literature.

This year's nominees have all made a name for themselves with their contribution to literature "which is innovative within its genre, or which manages to portray reality in a new and surprising way". The nominated authors and works are Cecilie Lind - 'Pigedyr', Jens Christian Grøndahl - ’Fra i nat sover jeg på taget’, Nanna Storr-Hansen - ’Bøgetid’, Jens-Martin Eriksen - ’Natten er Jordens skygge’, Lisbeth Smedegaard Andersen - ’Bibelens kvinder’, Jesper Vaczy Kragh - ’IQ 75 – Erling og åndssvageforsorgen’, Lars Frost - ’De forenede/A constitutional’, Kristina Nya Glaffey - ’To The Modern Man’, Rasmus Nikolajsen - ’Måske sjælen’ og Rasmus Daugbjerg - ’Trold’.

Previous winners include big and prominent names in Danish-language literature such as Mette Moestrup, Asta Olivia Nordenhof, Jonas Eika and – most recently – Helle Helle. This year's award recipient joins a distinguished line of literary colleagues.

A celebration of agenda-setting literature

The Literary Award pays tribute to authors and their works, but it also celebrates literature as a whole and recognises how important and agenda-setting it is, thankfully, still.

"Our mission with the award is to honour Danish quality literature that pushes the mental boundaries of readers, has great cultural significance, and which often also finds it difficult under normal market conditions. We emphasise the new and innovative in terms of form.”

- Peter Nielsen, literary editor Dagbladet Information.

The award committee consists of critics from Dagbladet Information. In addition to the honour and recognition, the award comes with 100,000 DKK sponsored by Montana Furniture.

The evening's host is Kamilla Löfström. Kamilla Löfström is an external lecturer at the University of Copenhagen and literary critic and reviewer at Dagbladet Information. In her work as a critic, she has also sat on the jury for the awarding of the annual Montana Literary Award.

The nominees for Montana's Literary Award 2022

Cecilie Lind - Pigedyr

The eyes which one reads her books with just get bigger and bigger. Pigedyr is born to become a modern classic a la Tove Ditlevsen's Dependency.

Jens Christian Grøndahl: 'Fra i nat sover jeg på taget'

Grøndahl renews the novel by reverting it to one of its oldest tasks: to let us know a specific person better than we might even know ourselves.

Nanna Storr-Hansen: 'Bøgetid'

The poems in Bøgetid mix calm everyday life – neither ecstatic moment nor dramatic narrative – with an equally calm nature and let different spheres, from suburban life to plant growth, overlap each other in ways that feel both surprising and natural.

Jens-Martin Eriksen: 'Natten er Jordens skygge'

Over the years, Jens-Martin Eriksen has ranged widely in his prose (...) With Natten er Jordens skygge, he finally tackled the darkest material in his baggage and got it artistically redeemed in a genre-crossing mixture of coming-of-age novel and fragmented short story.

Lisbeth Smedegaard Andersen: 'Bibelens kvinder'

Bibelens kvinder is a knowledgeable and bold retelling that does not preach, but asks questions. One is tempted to say that it contains creative power. With words and pictures, Lisbeth Smedegaard Andersen blows the dust off the biblical women who have long been kept silent.

Jesper Vaczy Kragh: 'IQ 75 – Erling og åndssvageforsorgen'

It is not only buildings, legal texts, politicians, documents, doctors and other authorities that are allowed to tell the story of those incarcerated. They also do that themselves. And in this way they rise as citizens before our eyes and as people who whistle in photographs.

Lars Frost: ’De forenede/A constitutional'

Frost once again writes the best prose in Denmark, unsurpassedly superb, mischievous, charming, confusing, cheerful, sharp. The best will both say: It is a joy, a beauty in itself, through its rhythms and melodies alone. It also wants to say: It effortlessly makes complicated moods and figures and situations immeasurably alive for us.

Kristina Nya Glaffey: 'To The Modern Man'

If one imagines that the fire that can come out of an old dog's nostrils in comics could be captured, remelted and then molded into book form, the result would look like Kristina Nya Glaffey's little evil revenge book To The Modern Man . (...) The book sparks and fumes itself in a sumptuous hellfire. It is in no way edifying, but extremely entertaining. If not exactly captivating.

Rasmus Nikolajsen: 'Måske sjælen'

As Tue Andersen Nexø wrote in his review, the poetry grows over the drama like "ivy over an old war ruin". It is a way of moving a family story that was overpowered by the Occupation, back into the kitchen, back into relationships and everyday life and life that has not been seen before.

Rasmus Daugbjerg: 'Trold'

Trold is written in present tense, simple main sentences in a row. That simplicity sounds like a song. It comes straight from the forest and is about human greed at all times.