Tove Ditlevsen was born in 1917 in a working-class neighborhood in Copenhagen. Her first volume of poetry was published when she was in her early twenties and was followed by many more books, including the three volumes of The Copenhagen Trilogy: Childhood (1967), Youth (1967), and Dependency (1971). She died in 1976.

Sophia Hersi Smith and Jennifer Russell are translators living in Copenhagen. Together, they have translated fiction and poetry by Danish writers such as Olga Ravn, Tove Ditlevsen, and Solvej Balle.

"Aching and accomplished . . . a haunting and deeply felt portrayal of intimate catastrophe." --Publishers Weekly (starred review)

"Reading Vilhelm's Room, the final novel from the great Danish writer Tove Ditlevsen, what hits you first is how wonderful her sentences are . . . Ditlevsen's unusual way of seeing the world, and her sprightly humour, run throughout this short book . . . Vilhelm's Room is a beguiling, often confounding novel from one of the 20th century's most original writers." --Ellen Peirson-Hagger, The Observer

"Ditlevsen makes this darkest of all material fascinating, perversely likable and occasionally revelatory. She's a brilliant writer and formidable thinker . . . a unique and powerful document of catastrophic mental illness." --Sandra Newman, The Guardian