Jesper Wung-Sung

William is an ordinary twelve-year-old boy who has cancer. His life has changed. He can no longer go to school or go out to play. The things and people around him, not least his parents, are also changing as he becomes the one who always needs to be taken into consideration. William’s existence is becoming governed by his disease.

Yet he dreams up an imaginary companion: a personification of the cancer that has taken him hostage, which he gives the name “Knud”, alluding to the Danish word for tumour, “knude”. Ud med Knud (in English “Boot Canute”) tells the story of William’s relationship with Knud. How he argues with Knud. How he lets himself be provoked by Knud. How he has fun with Knud. How he gets to know himself and his illness through Knud. Knud challenges him in a way that is different to anything and anyone else. Yet by the same token, he also wants to give Knud the boot. He tries several times, yet feels as though something is missing when he succeeds, and just as a hostage may feel a strong connection with their kidnapper, William feels a connection with Knud.

As the disease takes its course, William’s classmate Katrine learns that “there’s a small child in everyone who has to learn to die”. This requires courage since, as William believes, God wasn’t quite ready when he set about creating life – he was like a schoolboy who starts writing a story without thinking about how it will go.  

Jesper Wung-Sung lets the book’s narrative keep a balance between the empathetic portrayal of a boy with cancer and the grotesque, humorous representation of William and Knud’s boyish togetherness.

The novel uses language that is never banal, pedagogically correct, or routine to address some of life’s big questions, and touches readers aged 12 to 100 with its harsh, painful zest for life.

• Jesper Wung-Sung was born in 1971.
• He made his début in 1998 with the short stories To ryk og en aflevering (in English “Kick and rush”) which won him Bogforum’s debutant prize.
• Since then he has written numerous books for all ages across a variety of genres.
• The young people’s novel Kopierne (in English “The copies”) won him the Ministry of Culture Author Prize for Children’s and Young People’s Literature in 2010.
• In the same year he was also awarded Denmark’s School Librarian Children’s Book Prize.