The Girl on the Big White Ship

War, love and above all, duty.

"The Girl on the Big White Ship" is a historical page-turner about the nurses onboard the Danish hospital ship, the MS Jutlandia and its controversial, humanitarian intervention during the Korean War in 1951-53.

A small village in northern Korea is incinerated by napalm bombs that, without warning, suddenly come screaming down from the skies. Eleven-year-old Yun and her brother watch as the flames slowly devour their home and the life they had. Thrust into a war they don’t understand, they flee south on a perilous odyssey through a country and people devastated by war.

In Denmark Molly Dahl, a young surgical nurse,  is about to board Jutlandia which is to  set sail for Korea and the war in a matter of hours. Molly is no stranger to war; she has faced its horrors and treated its mutilated victims. Her own body has suffered the trauma of wartime fanaticism. But the humanitarian crisis that Molly and the other nurses will find in Korea far surpasses anything she has ever experienced before. They find themselves forced to navigate the chaos of international politics and an unforgiving onslaught of relentless violence.

About the authors

Mich Vraa (b. 1954) is a Danish journalist and author, but also a prolific literary translator of some of the greatest English and American writers.

He has translated into Danish the works of Jonathan Franzen, Ernest Hemingway and Don DeLillo as well as popular bestseller authors like Elmore Leonard and Dan Brown.

In 2014, he was awarded the Danish Translators Association Honorary Award for his work. He has written over 20 novels, including crime novels, children’s and young adult books.

He was awarded the Otto B. Lindhardt Literature Prize in 2017.

Jesper Bugge Kold (b. 1972) is a Danish journalist and author of five novels.