Iron Lung
Kirstine Reffstrup author Hunter Simpson translator
Format:Paperback
Publisher:Peirene Press Ltd
Publishing:22nd Apr '25
£12.99
This title is due to be published on 22nd April, and will be despatched as soon as possible.
A girl is struck down by polio during the terrifying epidemic of the early 1950s. Paralyzed and unable to breathe on her own, she is committed to the hospital in Copenhagen and placed in an iron lung. Forty years earlier, a child grows up in an orphanage for boys outside of Budapest. The child goes by the name of ‘Boy’ but is not like the others, as their body seems to transcend the categories of boy or girl. Between these two young people, there is a powerful, enigmatic bond that stretches across time and space. Iron Lung is a poetic allegory of adolescence, and an unsettling and subtle commentary on sexuality, medicine, and technology.
'As saturated with colours, sounds, scents, tactile sensations and fantastic imagery as hardly anything else I’ve read … Reffstrup’s prose is like a magic carpet, delicately woven with the finest threads. 5/6 star.’ – Politiken
‘A magical story of living in two worlds … Iron Lung lives and breathes precisely through Reffstrup’s sense of style and painterly ability to create literary images. With this novel, she shows her powerful, poetic voice. A writer who isn’t afraid to plunge into bold fantasies.’ – Dagsavisen
‘If you’re a good enough writer, you can persuade the reader to accept the most incredible things … Iron Lung takes us to strange places, exploring different aspects of humanity in poetic, hypnotic, sensuous prose that makes the familiar unfamiliar and brings the eerie close to us.’ – NRK
- Winner of Stig Sæterbakken Memorial Prize 2023
ISBN: 9781916806047
Dimensions: unknown
Weight: unknown
272 pages