Baby is a 1973 novel by Danish

Denmark

Denmark is a Scandinavian country in Northern Europe. The countries of Denmark and Greenland, as well as the Faroe Islands, constitute the Kingdom of Denmark . It is the southernmost of the Nordic countries, southwest of Sweden and south of Norway, and bordered to the south by Germany. Denmark...

 author Kirsten Thorup

Kirsten Thorup

Kirsten Thorup, a Danish author, was born in Funen, Denmark, in 1942 and now lives in Copenhagen. She is the author of three poetry collections, a volume of short stories, and three novels including Baby which has been translated into English. She has also written for films, television, and radio....

. It deals with the disadvantaged members of society, those who have failed to make a mark.

The novel traces the movements of a selection of losers as they leave a cheap Copenhagen

Copenhagen

Copenhagen is the capital and largest city of Denmark, with an urban population of 1,199,224 and a metropolitan population of 1,930,260 . With the completion of the transnational Øresund Bridge in 2000, Copenhagen has become the centre of the increasingly integrating Øresund Region...

 nightclub. There is Mark, a car salesman heavily in debt who ultimately separates from his pretty wife, Suzie who goes off to Sweden on a drunken escape, Leni who translates porno rather than the book she would like to complete, and many others. The losers are contrasted with Eddy, a loan shark, who causes increasing distress among his clients.

The overall message seems to be that nothing really matters, everything is reduced to the same low common denominator. The book is written in a simple style that is easy to read—whether as a novel or as an ambitious experiment.

The novel was awarded the Pegasus Prize

Pegasus Prize

The Pegasus Prize for Literature is a literary prize established by the Mobil Corporation in 1977 to honor works from countries whose literature is rarely translated into English....

for Literature in 1979.