1970 Klaus Rifbjerg, Denmark: Anna (jeg) Anna

Klaus Rifbjerg has been active for more than 50 years, publishing two-three titles every year in a wide variety of genres: novels, children’s books, short stories, TV manuscripts, collection of poems, plays, essays, travel books – the list is long. His quick understanding, limitless fantasy and disrespect for various rules and perceptions of the world are features that permeate Klaus Rifbjerg’s production cornucopia.

Anna (I) Anna tells the story in the first person about a diplomat’s wife who must go home to receive psychiatric treatment for severe obsessive compulsive neurosis. On the plane, she meets a hippie who is also heading home, but with a police escort. They flee together, and somehow she finds her own inner self in the Bohemian settings and social degradation. But what she finds is not an integral person in the conventional sense. On the contrary, she and the world surrounding her appear as ever-changing multifaceted patchworks. In depicting the dissolved feeling of Anna’s being, the novel anticipates in many respects a post-modern view of humans and understanding of their lives.

Anna (jeg) Anna (Anna (I) Anna)

Published by: Gyldendal publishing company 

Publication year: 1969

After a vote, the committee decided to award the Nordic Council Literature Prize 1970 to Klaus Rifbjerg for his novel “Anna (I) Anna”, a psychological life-study of a modern woman, created with empathy and rich imaginative language, which reflects the social and moral crises in bourgeois society.