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    Undtagelsen
    Undtagelsen
    Undtagelsen
    Audiobook20 hours

    Undtagelsen

    Written by Christian Jungersen

    Narrated by Ellen Dahl Bang

    3.5/5

    ()

    About this audiobook

    Hør Ellen Dahl Bang læse Undtagelsen, som Christian Jungersen fik både De Gyldne Laurbær - boghandlernes pris - og P2's Romanpris for. På det lille "Dansk Center for Information om Folkedrab" på Østerbro arbejder fire kvinder: Camilla, Anne-Lise, Malene og Iben. Da Iben en dag modtager en anonym trusselsmail på engelsk, begynder mistankerne at svirre på den lille arbejdsplads. Er den fra en af aktørerne i de store folkedrab - for eksempel serberen Mirko Zigic - som de publicerer artikler om på nettet, eller er den sendt inde fra huset, for eksempel fra computeren inde hos Anne-Lise, som Iben og Malene mistænker for at lide af en personlighedsforstyrrelse? En psykologisk thriller og en historie om kvinders venskab samt en filosofisk roman om ondskab på både mikro- og makroplan.


     


    "En romanteknisk åbenbaring (...) En suverænitet der sjældent ses i Danmark. Helt ned i detaljen er miljøbeskrivelserne fængende og på kornet."

    - Tue Andersen Nexø, Information


    "...intenst spændende både som thriller og som øjebliksbillede af Danmark og nogle danskere lige nu,"

    Jon Helt Haarder, Jyllands-Posten



    "*****. ...fantastisk blanding af en spændingsroman (...) og så en knastør, rammende realistisk beskrivelse af dagens Danmark,"

    Michael Eigtved, B.T.

    "***** ...meget aktuel og meget raffineret psykologisk thriller,"

    Nils Gunder Hansen, Berlingske Tidende



    "Et magtfuldt og foruroligende studie i ondskabens psykologi, og en stram thriller."

    - Sunday Telegraph

    LanguageDansk
    PublisherGyldendal
    Release dateMay 31, 2007
    ISBN9788702061772
    Undtagelsen

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    Reviews for Undtagelsen

    3.5/5

    200 ratings12 reviews

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    • 2/5
      A slow slog that left me feeling unconnected (and unconcerned) with any of the characters. I get the themes and the connections that the author was trying to make (human capacity for evil (and good) in extraordinary or stressful circumstances) but the execution didn't wow me. And the end made me feel like this book couldn't decide if it wanted to be a page-turning best seller or deeper commentary on humanity so it decided to do both but poorly.
    • 2/5
      Another in the ever expanding sub-genre of Scandinavian thrillers with incredibly stilted dialog, terrible translation, improbable coincidences, pop psychology, insufferable hi-tech and current event references, and self-absorbed intellectual proselytizers out to save the world. Too bad since the premise is interesting and the story does kind of grow on you by the end.
    • 4/5
      Dark story about women in an office dedicated to the study of genocide. Author explores what makes people evil, both historically in mass murder, and locally in small groups.
    • 3/5
      Four women work at the Danish Centre for Genocide Information. Iben and Malene are old friends from University who are now project officers at the Centre, Camilla is secretary to the Centre’s Director and Anna-Lise, the newest member of staff, is the librarian. Iben and Malene receive death threats via email and attempt to work out whether the source of the threats was one of the war criminals they have written about as part of their work or someone within their own office. Chapters told from each of the women’s point of view build up a picture of how psychological stress impacts on a fairly closed micro-environment.

      This turned out to be one of those books that, for several reasons, sounded like a better idea than it turned out to be in reality. For a start I have a vague uneasiness about books in which all the female characters are portrayed with varying degrees of mental instability, especially when the book is authored by a bloke. Although I don’t really think that in this instance anything sinister is meant by the depictions, it wasn’t that many years ago when ‘all women are crazy’ was considered a legitimate medical opinion (I read loads of such sentiments in my days as an archivist). A good deal of the behaviour depicted here would have had misogynists everywhere nodding sagely and murmuring about women staying at home where they belong. So while the psychological breakdown of each character was well done I would have preferred that at least one of the women had turned out not to be a sex-obsessed, blithering mess (or worse).

      Also, as is often the case these days I thought the book was too long. At many points in the story a load of detail about some minor tangent was incorporated and even though some of these were interesting most did nothing to progress the story. At 300-350 pages and minus trivia about who sat next to whom at a conference and how many meals of frozen cod were microwaved I would have found the book far more suspenseful.

      I read a good deal of translated fiction and normally don’t notice it except to marvel at a skill I could never hope to achieve. However in this instance I found the language to be rather formal. I know we Aussies have a tendency towards laziness with our particular adaptation of the lingo but I don’t know of any place where English is the primary language that would talk of someone ‘fixing herself a portion of cereal’ for example. It felt to me as if the book had been translated into a sort of dictionary version of the language that no one actually speaks and this gave it a quite unnatural quality.

      Finally there was my all too familiar disappointment with the ending. Even allowing for the slightly fantastical element provided by a psychological melt down the ending wasn’t in keeping with the rest of the book. A fairly standard thriller-ish conclusion was bolted on to three quarters of a psychological suspense novel in a way that didn’t suit either style and I found this quite unsatisfying. It did keep me guessing though so I have to give some marks for that.

      The structure of the book, which included several articles supposedly written by Iben about the psychology of evil in addition to the different points of view, worked surprisingly well and I was both fascinated and horrified by the parts of the book that dealt with all the genocides in our planet’s history. However this made me more tempted to seek out some non-fiction about yet another subject I appear to be woefully ignorant of rather than keen to read another book by this author.
    • 5/5
      It's a very good book, both in psychological terms and as a pure voltage entertainment. One of the main characters is a librarian, and it's interesting for us who share this profession, it is not often librarians in thrillers! She works at a center for research on the genocide in Copenhagen. There begins the employees get death threats, which is believed to be from a Serbian war criminal as one of the employees have written about. While there is a nasty social game at work, the librarian is frozen out of the other. I'm not so fond of detective stories / thrilllers otherwise, but this was a page-turner with depth behind.
    • 2/5
      Perhaps it's not translated for American English as it is choppy and flat. Four Danish women in an office dealing with world horror of genocide. Immature, spiteful and inclined to lie down when anything out of the ordinary occurs. Or to call a meeting of the entire organization, all five of them, the male boss roped in. The group must then discuss the petty nonsense relentlessly. Probable TV serial. Maybe it was written for an American audience after all.
    • 2/5
      Four women work together in a genocide information centre in Copenhagen. One day, two of them receive emailed death threats. At first, they assume the threats are from one of the mass murderers they've written about, but then booby traps appear in the office, and they start to mistrust each other. As the relationships between them deteriorate, things get worse and worse...In a nutshell, the novel argues that all of us have deep-rooted fears and concerns, which if played upon can lead us to irrational behaviour - and when taken to extremes, this is what leads to genocide. It's an interesting idea, but I have two problems with it:- first, the execution. The book's focused on its didactic intent, and everything is just so implausible - from the main story development to the little details (if you thought you were being victimised by work colleagues, would you really start reading about the psychopathology of evil?). Also, the writing (or the translation) is very clunky, and the characters are pretty annoying. - secondly, I don't really buy the proposition that, say, reacting irrationally if you think your more attractive friend is interested in the same guy you are is *really* on the same spectrum as clubbing your neighbours to death. Or if it is, it's so far the other end of the spectrum as makes no difference.So, an interesting rather than enjoyable read for me. Recommended for: someone who is interested in ideas about the nature of evil.
    • 4/5
      I liked this book, it is the story of a work enviroment, and the interpersonal issues that come in work. but also a real study of evil the ending is great because you dont know, at least I didnt know you did it
    • 4/5
      Excellent, very memorable novel. See the plot summaries, etc., written by the reviewers on Amazon.What matters in this book is the extremely unusual mixture of fiction and nonfiction. The researchers in the book write reports on evil, genocide, and other subjects, and we read them embedded in the novel. The facts in those reports are all real, and I learned, for example, about theories of evil in the Third Reich beginning with Arendt and continuing to the present.But then between the reports, the fictional authors continue to do evil to one another. It's a very effective device.When I met Jungersen in Copenhagen, he said he wrote intuitively, and he had little to add. I don't believe artists who claim they are intuitive: it's an easy out when it comes to public relations. I hope he changes his attitude to his own work.The book ends weakly, with a chapter ripped from (or written for) a Hollywood screenplay.
    • 4/5
      This book surprised me....I anticipated a conventional psychological thriller, and it did deliver on that expectation. What I did not expect was the thought provoking examination of the nature of evil. I thorougly enjoyed it, and found that it stayed with me for days after closing the book.
    • 4/5
      It's embarrassing to discover I've already read a book, after reading the whole entire thing all over again. It was on a Kindle this time, maybe that's my excuse. It did seem oddly familiar in parts. I guess I should just re-post the review I wrote before, since, fortunately, I still completely agree with it!A very interesting book about the nature of evil (sort of like the fiction equivalent of The Lucifer Effect), explored in a strange combination of the banal (office politics) and the horrific (various accounts of genocide). It kept my interest throughout; the characters were very well developed, but the combination was jarring and the violence at the end was somewhat short of believable.
    • 3/5
      This is one of the hardest books to review. I hesitate to use the word schizophrenic about the book, but that occurred to me after reading some of the hallucinations by one of the characters late in the book as being apropos about the book itself. Nominally a thriller, the book is basically US TV show 'The Office' meets John Le Carre book. The story centers around four female Danish officemates who work at a research library and activist organization against Genocide. The book moves along but the author gets a little 'cute' - or schizophrenic - in his use of the following techniques: skipping point of view of each of the four from chapter to chapter, breaking from that, inserting text of anti-genocide articles to the point where they are almost propaganda, and have little or nothing to do with the story, hallucinations, mental illness, multiple-personalities, etc. Were the book to have a couple fewer of these techniques it would be more solid. It received a world of praise, I believe it probably isn't as good as an International Book Award. Perhaps it's the translation but not a lot of sophisticated or even ultra-simple writing. The writing isn't labored, but it seems to be almost student writing. I wouldn't be suprised if this came out of a writing workshop or some process of mapping out plot by an academic rather than 'from the heart' or scratched out ad hoc. I hate to be negative on something that is truly unique. I am not sure anything like this has ever been written--with the combinations, the underlying political themes, mystery, all female protagonists. However the author resorts to pretty unbelievable and unconnected approaches at times.