Shakespeare’s Hamlet is perhaps the most famous Danish depressive, but Soren Kierkegaard gives him a run for his money. A figure of fun in his hometown of Copenhagen, mocked and satirised in the local press, Kierkegaard lost his father and three of his siblings by age 27, had a disastrous love life, and wrote uncompromisingly difficult philosophical works. So it’s not surprising that he’s an outsize but rather remote figure in the popular cultural imagination. This week’s guest wants to change all that – she’s written a biography of Kierkegaard that brings the man and the work into sharp, sympathetic focus.