Short stories from each of my four published absurdist short story collections translated into English and folowed by the Danish text.
My short stories are written in an absurdist and slightly surreal stile. In the stories unreality opens up a crack through which you catch a glimpse of the anxiety at the bottom of human existence. In these short stories the boundary between dreams and reality are blurred. In my stories life is generally seen as strange and tragic, and a strange life needs strange stories.
“Blind staircase” (In Danish: Blind trappe)
A rocking horse which growes, a doll maker who changes her lovers into dolls, a man who has never thought of birds but ends up as one, a woman who has difficulties with her wings, a man who gets an appointment at the crematorium, a staircase which is higher than the house. My first short story collection “Blind staircase” is a collection of twelve absurdist short stories in which the world behaves differently from what is usually the case and where the strangeness of life is enhanced.
“There Was a Time When I Never Thought of Birds”, the fourth short story in “Blind Staircase” can be read here: https://www.stenjacobsen.dk/?page_id=1539
“Who can hurt a doll?” (In Danish: Hvem kan gøre en dukke fortræd?)
My second collection “Who can hurt a doll?” is a collection of eleven short stories which deals with the disquieting transition from childhood to adulthood. In puberty and pre-puberty, when the idyll of childhood cracks and where the adult world is out of reach strange and dominant communities are created where the boundaries between dream and reality are blurred.
Short story number 1 “Little Angie” from my short story collection “Who can Hurt a Doll?” can be read here: https://www.stenjacobsen.dk/?page_id=1550
“Pell-mell” (In Danish: Hulter til bulter)
My third collection “Pell-mell” is a collection of 17 slightly absurdist short stories in which the world suddenly proves to be differet from what was usually expected. People’s reactions are often difficult to predict and often the world suddenly turns out to have changed completely.
Short story number three “Bagatelle for lovers and four ducks” can be read here: https://www.stenjacobsen.dk/?page_id=1209
“Imprudent stories” (Uforstandige historier)…..
My fourth short story collection “Imprudent stories” is a collection of short stories with humorously oblique angles on the feminist mentality of our time. It consists of 19 short stories of different themes and length. There is the story about Sebastian and Jacob who unawares offend a non-binary safe space, about Jacob who suffers from nightmares about his old girlfriends, about the author of the book who discovers that he, five years after his retirement, has been retrospectively cancelled from Vordingborg secondary school where he worked for 37 years … there are stories about men who feel chased by abusive women, about the anthropologist who has moved to a village in order to worship the memory of his deceased dog, about God’s problems with judging in simple human matters, about tribulations of being a vicious dog, about a levitation at department D7 … and many more imprudences.
Short story number 2 “Look at me!” and 15 “All honour to Birger’s memory” can be read here: https://www.stenjacobsen.dk/?page_id=2611