IN THE EARLY MONTHS OF 1938, THE DANISH WRITER Tove Ditlevsen, then 20 years old, moved from her parents’ small Copenhagen apartment into a room of her own. Her mother called her “heartless” for moving, and for taking her nannying wages with her; her father, a frequently out-of-work socialist, added to the guilt trip, reminding her that she already had a bedroom in which to “write all the poems you want.” Ditlevsen left anyway. In her new home, for which she paid 40 kroner a month, she could entertain her friends, come home late, and, most important, nurture the dream of writing a book. That said, the unheated room was “ice-cold,” and the miserly landlady, Mrs. Suhr, was an ardent member of the Danish Nazi Party, prone to addressing a…
