These short stories are brief, devastating, acid-sharp portrayals of love, marriage and family in mid-century Copenhagen. Here the ordinary events of everyday life - a wife anxious not to wake her husband, a little boy losing his father's beloved knife, a married woman's obsessive longing for a yellow silk umbrella, a girl dreaming of a masquerade ball - become dark and disconcerting, as we see what lies beneath. Translated into English for the first time, these are stories that explore yearning, fear, despair and the elusiveness of that strange thing called happiness. A shimmering collection of stories from the author of The Copenhagen Trilogy.