We, the Drowned

[Translated by Charlotte Barslund and Emma Ryder] In 1848, a crew of Danish sailors sets sail to fight the Germans. Not all of them return -- and those who do will never be the same. Among them is the daredevil Laurids Madsen, who promptly escapes again into the anonymity of the high seas. This is also the story of the port town of Marstal, Denmark, whose inhabitants sailed the world from the mid-nineteenth century to the end of World War II, and about the women and children left behind. It tells of ships wrecked and blown up, of places of terror and violence that lured each generation with their cannibals, shrunken heads, cowards, heroes, tragedies, and miraculous survivals. The result is a brilliant seafaring novel.