An Altered Light
by Jens Christian Grøndahl

Translated from the Danish by Anne Born

• Copenhagen Central Library, Denmark

Publisher of Nominated Edition
Harcourt ISBN 0151010439

Irene Beckman appears to have a perfect life: two grown children, a house in a prosperous suburb of Copenhagen, and a successful career as a family lawyer. She is cool, sophisticated, and still exotically good-looking, the dyed hair her only concession to time.

Then her husband announces that he's leaving her, and her mother reveals some unexpected information about Irene's father. Suddenly, Irene Beckman is neither wife nor daughter. Nor, she realizes, is it at all clear who she has been all these years. It is time to find out.

An Altered Light is another fascinating exploration of the nature of chance and relationships-between parents and children, husbands and wives, friends and strangers.

Jens Christian Grøndahl is one of the most celebrated and widely read novelists in Europe today. He has written plays, essays, and twelve novels, and his work has been translated into more than a dozen languages. He lives in Copenhagen.