Take Back the Streets

Take Back the Streets is the result of a highly fruitful collaboration between Denmark’s two uncrowned YA queens. All the edge and intensity, seriousness and humour that were in Sanne’s and Sarah’s previous works are summoned together here to create a book that explores life on the fringes of high school; a book about self discovery, about finding your inner strength - even when you think it’s gone for good. A book, of course, that’s also about love.

Polly has just started high school in Hjørring, which she sees as a metropolis on a par with Paris in comparison with the small town of Hirtshals, where she lives with her dad, right next door to her grandma. Polly’s mum died in a car accident when she was just four, but that’s a taboo subject at home because her dad can’t bear talking about it. Dad and Grandma are pretty much neck and neck in the ‘keep-a-low-profile’ competition, which is basically the only thing people do in Hirtshals. That’s why they batter out the same mantra over and over – your reputation gets around faster than you do. They try to drum this into Polly’s head but, by a crazy series of flukes, she ends up part of a popular and wayward clique of girls at school. After a fantastic trip to Aalborg, she thinks that Hirtshals will forgive her as quickly as her hangover fades. But she’s very much mistaken ...

About the author 

Sarah Engell (b. 1979) debuted in 2009 with the novel If Only …. Engell’s 21 Ways to Die has been hailed as this decade’s best YA novel. The Choice is her most recent YA novel (Carlsen, 2017). In general, Sarah has been praised for her realistic use of youth slang and ‘street language’ and her believable characters.

Sanne Munk Jensen (b. 1979) She debuted in 2002 with her YA novel The Closest and had her breakthrough with One Day the Sun Will Also Shine on a Dog’s Arse in 2007. In 2014, she won the Ministry of Culture’s Book Prize for ‘Children and Young Adult Books’.

Text translated by Paul Larkin