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Knud Romer Den som blinker er bange for døden. Copenhagen. Athene / Aschehoug. 2006. 177 pages. 229 kr. ISBN 87-11-1 7106-5
FALSTER is Denmark's southernmost island, within easy ferry reach from Germany; and here, in 1960, our narrator Knud (Knüdchen) was born in a town "so small it begins by ending. If you're in you can't get out - you go right through, and the only traces left are in your clothes, smelling of fertilizer in summer and sugar beets in winter."
The World War II invasion of Falster had been facilitated by imsunk ferries and obligingly unextinguished Danish lighthouses. When invading troops got lost, marching in circles in the one-way streets, they were helped toward Copenhagen, via the unexploded bridge, by the narrator's German-speaking father.
Other farcical elements are the paternal grandfather's many exploits, novel bus routes "into nowhere," hotels without any guests, and a...