De uren (The hours) takes place on one day in the lives of three women, at three different moments in the 20th century. One is a book publisher, the other a housewife and the third is the writer Virginia Woolf on the day she commits suicide. All three struggle with the question how to be yourself in a world that is tight like a straitjacket.

ELINE ARBO ABOUT THE HOURS

'It is an incredibly beautiful story of three women whose lives are inextricably linked. All three struggle with the roles assigned to them and seek their own way of freedom. What I love about the book is how Cunningham manages to combine existential issues with social themes through the parallel storylines.

By portraying women from completely different times, questions arise about the level of emancipation today and the role patterns that lie deeply hidden in our culture. At the same time, it is an intimate portrait of three people whose desperate quest for freedom has major consequences for the people in their environment. '

Both the book and the successful film adaptation by Stephen Daldry (with Nicole Kidman and Meryl Streep, among others) have become classics.