Also known as Peter Hoeg. Born: Copenhagen, Denmark, 17 May 1957. Education: Graduated from Frederiksberg Gymnasium, 1976; studied literary theory, University of Copenhagen, M.A. 1984. Family: Married Kenyan dancer Akinyi, late 1980s; two daughters. Career: Full-time writer, since the late 1980s; in the late 1970s and early 1980s he alternately worked as a crewman on yachts, danced with the Royal Danish Ballet, fenced professionally, and acted in the theater in Paris and Sweden; taught acting in a high school in Odense and at the University of Odense in Denmark, 1984; started the Lolwe Foundation to aid poor mothers and children in developing nations, 1996. Lives in Denmark. Awards: De Gyldne Laurbar (Golden Laurel) award for Danish literature, 1994.
Publications
Fiction
Forestilling om det tyvende arhundrede. 1988; as The History of Danish Dreams, translated by Barbara Haveland, 1995.
Fortallinger om natten. 1990; as Tales of the Night, translated by Barbara Haveland, 1997.
Fr0ken Smillas fornemmelse for sne. 1992; as Smilla’s Sense of Snow, translated by Tiina Nunnally, 1993; as Miss Smilla’s Feeling for Snow, translated by F. David, 1993.
De maske egnede. 1993; as Borderliners, translated by Barbara Haveland, 1994.
Kvinden og aben. 1996; as The Woman and the Ape, translated by Barbara Haveland, 1996.
Other
Preface, Point of View, photographs by Henrik Saxgren. 1998.
Critical Studies:
”Strangers in Paradise” by Nader Mousavizadeh, in New Republic, no. 212, 1993; ”Fleeing Literary Limelight for Calm Obscurity” (interview) by Sarah Lyall, in New York Times, 6 October 1993; ”Peter H0eg and the Critical Apes” by Lars Henrik Aagaard, translated by W. Glyn Jones, in Danish Literary Magazine, no. 10, 1996; ”Smilla’s Sense of Success: Peter Hoeg Believes that The Woman And The Ape Represents a Breakthrough, Yet He Tempers His Enthusiasm” (interview) by Dan Cryer, in Newsday, 3 December 1996; ”A House of Mourning: Fr0ken Smillas fornemmelse for sne" by Mary Kay Norseng and ”Peter H0eg and the Sense of Writing” by Hans Henrik M0ller, in Scandinavian Studies, no. 69, 1997; ”Film Must Speak to the Heart: A Conversation Between Peter H0eg and Bille August” by Jes Stein Pedersen, in Smilla’s Sense of Snow: The Making of a Film by Bille August, Adapted from the Novel by Peter H0eg by Karin Trolle, 1997; ”Smilla’s Sense of Gender Identity” by Rachel Schaffer, in Clues: A Journal of Detection, no. 19, 1998.
A writer with an unmistakable disdain for literary celebrity, Peter H0eg is an enigmatic figure whose life and works, with one major exception, have remained somewhat obscure. The aura surrounding his international best-seller Smilla’s Sense of Snow has largely overshadowed his other four books, none of which enjoyed the same degree of near-unanimous critical praise or commercial success. Although he was hailed as a rising literary star when he published Smilla’s Sense of Snow at the age of 34—at which point he had already published the novel Forestilling om det tyvende arhundrede (The History of Danish Dreams) and the collection of stories Fortallinger om natten (Tales of the Night)—H0eg has not published a novel since 1996, when his Kvinden og aben (The Woman and the Ape) was released to mixed reviews. As a result, his status within world literature is still rather ambiguous, although he remains very popular in his native Denmark.
Smilla’s Sense of Snow established H0eg’s reputation, but in doing so also set expectations about his style and subject matter that have perhaps unjustly skewed the response to his other works, all of which have since been translated into English. Smilla’s Sense of Snow was billed by many reviewers as a mystery novel, and the plot that revolves around its heroine, an Inuit/Danish woman named Smilla Qaavigaaq Jaspersen who studies glaciers for a living, certainly contains many of the conventions of this genre. However, in examining the seemingly accidental death of a young neighbor who has fallen from a snowy roof, Smilla finds herself entangled in a far-reaching conspiracy that allows H0eg to do much more than simply spin out a thrilling detective tale. Smilla’s mixed heritage provides H0eg with the opportunity to comment critically on the historical maltreatment of the Inuit natives of Greenland by the Danes. Furthermore, the novel contains a subplot about a wondrous meteorite that may be alive, through which H0eg engages in an examination of the ethics of contemporary science and scientists.
The theme of a marginalized group’s struggles and elements of fantasy literature or ”magical realism” that are found in Smilla’s Sense of Snow are more representative of H0eg’s overall body of work than the conventions of the mystery genre, which he adapted for this particular novel and has not returned to since, albeit to the chagrin of many readers. H0eg’s novels, like his personal life, demonstrate sympathy for those whose relation to the dominant forces of ”civilization” is either grudging, unwilling, or doomed. His characters wrestle with the consequences of cultural oppression in a wide variety of forms—from the implications of Smilla’s mixed ethnicity to the abuses heaped upon students at an ostensibly progressive boarding school for troubled youths in H0eg’s third novel, De maske egnede (Borderliners).
This concept is perhaps most fully developed in Kvinden og aben, for which H0eg drew extensively upon his experiences in visiting his wife’s native country of Kenya, which the couple has repeatedly done for months at a time. Although the novel itself only addresses African culture obliquely, the inclusive worldview that H0eg came into contact with during his travels there is expressed in the bond he depicts between Madelene, an upper-class Danish woman living in London, and Erasmus, an ape who is the subject of study—and potential exploitation—by Madelene’s husband Adam, a blindly ambitious animal behaviorist. H0eg initially presents their relationship in a relatively realistic manner, showing how Madelene’s sympathy for Erasmus in light of her husband’s unethical treatment of the extraordinarily intelligent ape leads her to reevaluate her life, which is filled with trifles and alcoholic numbness. The tone and style changes dramatically in the middle of the novel, however, when Erasmus and Madelene escape together from the stifling environment of the house/ laboratory where they both have been confined. While on the run, they become lovers and Madelene develops Erasmus’s language skills, teaching him to speak fluently in both Danish and English.
Many critics objected to what they claimed was a heavy-handed animal rights message in the book (an intention H0eg denied repeatedly in the few interviews he gave to promote the book), and others accused H0eg of essentially restating the message of past works of science fiction such as the Planet of the Apes series—that humans and apes are more similar than humans might wish to accept. However,neither of these criticisms places the novel within the scope of the author’s other books. The dual heroes of Kvinden og aben closely resemble H0eg’s collection of sympathetically depicted ”misfits,” from Mads, the narrator of complex and often disturbing stories that span the 20th century in The History of Danish Dreams, through Smilla and Peter, the troubled yet unmistakably admirable adolescent who narrates Borderliners.
H0eg’s seeming inability to please his most outspoken critics seems to stem from his unwillingness to accommodate the expectations of those who want him to write either conventional genre fictions or highbrow philosophical novels. H0eg is equally comfortable (and interested in) writing about the complexities of theories concerning the nature of time—a subject that shows up in most of his books—as he is making allusions to popular culture, from thrillers in the vein of John LeCarre to B-movie science fiction like King Kong. Although this combination won him millions of readers in Smilla’s Sense of Snow, it has not resulted in similarly broad acclaim for his subsequent efforts.
Opinions regarding H0eg’s intensely private personal life demonstrate a similar misunderstanding. The fact that he and his family live willingly without such modern amenities as a television, a telephone, or a car has been interpreted by many of his commentators as evidence of his withdrawal from contemporary life. H0eg’s practice of personally delivering his manuscripts—which he writes out in longhand.He has frequently denied this interpretation, though, countering that his simple lifestyle is an indispensable part of his writing process because it frees him from distraction and allows him to focus his broad-ranging imagination. His willingness to engage with the world for the purpose of improving it is shown clearly by his establishment of the Lolwe Foundation, to which he donated all his profits from worldwide sales of The Woman and the Ape. This organization is dedicated to improving conditions in least developed nations through such projects as funding refugee camps for exiled Tibetans in Nepal or supporting independent businesswomen in Tanzania.
H0eg still has ample time to cement his place in world literature, but the combination of his deliberate pace of publication and his social and literary non-conformity complicates assessment of his contributions at the present time.
