Christian Jungersen is the author of four novels. His latest, Life Hunger, was published in Denmark in the fall of 2021, where it went straight to number one on the bestseller list. His previous novels have all been bestsellers and won major literary prizes.
Jungersen had his literary debut in 1999 with the novel Undergrowth, which won Denmark’s Best First Novel prize. It also won him a prestigious three-year writing fellowship from the Danish Arts Foundation – the first time in 20 years that the fellowship had been awarded on the basis of a first novel.
It took a long time, however, for Undergrowth to find a publisher. Until it did, Jungersen worked as a copywriter and an information officer. Here he witnessed varying forms of office harassment, experiences he drew upon in writing his second novel.
The Exception takes place in a small fictitious NGO, the Danish Centre for Genocide Information. Writing it involved extensive research on the psychology of genocide perpetrators at the very real Danish Centre for Holocaust and Genocide Studies.
When it was published in 2004, The Exception became an immediate bestseller, and it remained on the Danish bestseller list for more than 18 months – a feat no other Danish novel has achieved. It was sold for publication in 20 countries, won two literary prizes in Denmark, and was shortlisted for major prizes in France, Sweden, and the United Kingdom. In 2009, readers of Denmark’s largest newspaper voted The Exception the second-best Danish novel of the previous 25 years.
The year 2012 saw the Danish publication of You Disappear, Jungersen’s third novel. When one of its main characters develops a brain tumor, his personality changes dramatically. Not only is the book a compelling emotional drama, but it’s also an exploration of human personality in an age of neurological discovery. What is the soul, it asks, and what is free will? And how will our understanding of them change as we learn more about the brain?
To write You Disappear, Jungersen immersed himself in the world of people who suffer from brain damage and their families, and he also interviewed neurologists and psychiatrists. You Disappear remained on the Danish bestseller list for an entire year. It received wide critical acclaim, and thousands of Danish library users awarded it the Readers’ Book Prize.
Jungersen’s latest, Life Hunger, is a kaleidoscopic novel whose action is set on four continents. It required extensive research into Denmark’s Iranian community and the Danish prison system.
Jungersen was born and raised in Copenhagen’s suburbs. His father was a lawyer and his mother taught high school Latin and Greek.
After finishing a master’s degree in communication and sociology, Jungersen spent years pursuing his writing while working part-time jobs, including stints as a television script consultant and a college film instructor.
Jungersen lives on the island of Malta.