Terminal Innocence

Klaus Rifbjerg's 1958 novel is the story of an unequal friendship between two teenagers, Janus and Tore, told from the point of view and in the schoolboy slang of the hero-worshipping Janus. Tore is a gifted student, mature beyond his years. It is a foregone conclusion that he will fall in love with the equally peerless Helle; together they are the school's golden couple. It seems they will achieve a perfect union; but there is a snake in Paradise in the form of Helle's mother, fru Junkersen. Janus watches helplessly as the golden dream turns into a nightmare that destroys the two young lives, and he realizes his own complicity in perpetuating an unsustainable myth. Rifbjerg has been a central figure in Danish literary life - as novelist, poet, playwright, and cultural commentator - for the last sixty years. This novel, which was his first, is generally acknowledged to be his masterpiece.