Pheonix

Hanne Kvist’s novel Pheonix is about a teenage girl, Anna, who lives in Copenhagen in the near future. One day, after an explosion in Physics class, an unknown boy appears as the dust settles. Anna doesn’t know him, but he knows things about her that he shouldn’t be able to know. The boy calls himself Phoenix and says he was sent to investigate whether humanity is a species worth saving. Phoenix claims that he saved Anna’s father from an ambush in Arizona where her father was on a mission for NATO.

Phoenix is a young adult novel that describes the climate struggle in whiche we’re currently living. Hanne Kvist mulled over the story of Phoenix and Anna for many years before she settling on the form and setting for this thought-provoking and highly relevant young adult novel.

About the author

Hanne Kvist, born 1961, was trained in graphic design at the Graphic Design Folk High School. She debuted with the picture book Alle tiders rejse (The Journey of All Time, 1995). She won Denmark’s School Librarians’ Children’s Book Prize and the Danish Ministry of Culture’s Author’s Prize for children’s and young adult literature in 2017. She is a recipient of the Danish Arts Foundation’s three-year working grant.

Text translated by Sharon Rhodes