The Danish Girl

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The Danish Girl
288 pages; Penguin Books
The best option for trans men and women in Europe in the 1920s and 30s was a life of quiet shame. The worst? Lobotomy. David Ebershoff's elegant and sensuous 2000 novel fictionalizes the life of Einar Wegener, a Danish artist who pushed back against those grim expectations to become Lili, one of the first women who underwent sex-reassignment surgery. Eddie Redmayne, who's playing Lili in the November 27 film version, has already inspired talk about a second Best Actor Oscar nomination. But the book gives almost equal time to Einar's wife, Greta, and their remarkable and complex love story.
— Mark Athitakis