Justine

de Iben Mondrup, Kerri A. Pierce

"Stylistically provocative, Justine tells the story of a young female artist whose life is upended when her house burns down with all of the paintings for her upcoming exhibit inside. With little time left to recreate everything she's lost, Justine embarks on a series of sexual escapades with a sort of doomed intensity that foreshadows the novel's final, dark twist. Through flashbacks and fragmented memories, we see Justine as a student at the Art Academy first discovering the misogynistic order that rules the Danish art world, and later on as she constantly challenges its expectations--both in the studio and in bed. A personal meditation on artistic identity, the creative process, and the male-dominated art scene, the novel veers between the erotic and the savage, resulting in a spellbinding read from one of Denmark's edgiest contemporary feminist writers." --