Secrets of a Poet

THERE ARE POEMS TO BE BURNED AND A BOY TO BE KILLED. Paris, 1988. Freia Altena sits in Jardin du Luxembourg, watching over a boy who doesn’t know he is in danger. Death threats on library walls, scorched books on a shelf, and a blind battle with the past. Fighting for safety, Freia soon realises that there is a mystery far grander than expected, an intricate web of love and fury so beautifully dangerous that it threatens to burn everything down. A pen grazes paper, a tonearm scrapes on a record. For a moment, the world stands still and a whole world of art and passion lies buried just around the corner. Then, the clock spins again and the past has become the present and the future is but a poem in a book.

Excerpt from the book
Perhaps Freia is not cut out for this. She closes her eyes and opens them again. Paris remains the same, trains arriving and departing in a mechanical cycle. The sight becomes a poem in bold letters, a verse presenting the fact that Freia cannot give up on this warm spring day, for there are higher stakes and longer threads connecting dots that cannot be snapped in two by her feeble hands.

About the author
Mette Marit Tjelle Holm is a Danish-Norwegian writer of poetry, short stories, and fiction. When she is not writing, she loves to listen to old records and read lots of books. With tea, of course. Secrets of a Poet is her first novel.