Varvara Eng is a flamboyant, 79 1/2 year old Danish actress who has lived a very colorful life. When the struggling young writer Pelle is hired to write Varvara's memoir, he's told that Varvara wants "someone who knows how to lie without being exposed." The memoir is supposed to be published when Varvara turns 80, which means Pelle has eight weeks to finish it. But there are certain distractions.

There's Pelle's mounting bills, for one thing. Also there's his girlfriend, Johanne, who doesn't understand why he has agreed to become a ghost writer. And there's Varvara's lover, the diamond-trader Knud, who once in a while needs a courier for what may or may not be legal activities. And then there's the captivating young photographer, Knirke, whom he meets right before she embarks on a long trip around the globe.

So as Pelle begins to interview Varvara, nothing goes according to plan.

Told in the characteristically spare, precise style for which Fruelund is known in Denmark, one that calls to mind the innovative fiction of David Markson or Jenny Offill, The World and Varvara is a comic novel about celebrity and literature and the difficulty of accurately rendering another person's life.