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Hoeg, Peter ListingsIf you cannot find what you want on this page, then please use our search feature to search all our listings. Click on Title to view full description
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BORDERLINERS
Hoeg, Peter
1995 10016387 The second of Danish writer HYeg's novels to be translated into English (following Smilla's Sense of Snow) concerns a trio of misfits at an elite boarding school who discover they are guinea pigs in a sinister experiment. From Library Journal: In this extraordinary novel, Hoeg portrays the closed world of Biehl's, a Danish private school where a bizarre social experiment is underway. The narrator, Peter, is now a student at Biehl's after spending all of his life in children's homes and reform schools. He is a borderline case, along with Katarina, whose parents both died in the past year, and August, severely disturbed after killing his abusive parents. Although allowed no social interaction, the children conspire to conduct their own experiment to discover what plan is being carried out at Biehl's. Hoeg touches on some of the same themes as in his acclaimed Smilla's Sense of Snow -neglected children, scientific experiments, and technology-but this is not a thriller and may not appeal to the same audience. It is instead a fascinating intellectual puzzle that explores the themes of social control, child assessment, family, and the concept of time. Highly recommended. Delta 0-385-31508-2 / 9780385315081
Paperback As New Condition
Price:
14.11 USD
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SMILLA'S SENSE OF SNOW
HOEG, PETER
1993 46877 n this international bestseller, Peter Høeg successfully combines the pleasures of literary fiction with those of the thriller. Smilla Jaspersen, half Danish, half Greenlander, attempts to understand the death of a small boy who falls from the roof of her apartment building. Her childhood in Greenland gives her an appreciation for the complex structures of snow, and when she notices that the boy's footprints show he ran to his death, she decides to find out who was chasing him. As she attempts to solve the mystery, she uncovers a series of conspiracies and cover-ups and quickly realizes that she can trust nobody. Her investigation takes her from the streets of Copenhagen to an icebound island off the coast of Greenland. What she finds there has implications far beyond the death of a single child. The unusual setting, gripping plot, and compelling central character add up to one of the most fascinating and literate thrillers of recent years. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title. From Publishers Weekly The title of this quiet, absorbing suspense novel by a Danish author only suggests the intriguing story it tells. After young Isaiah Christiansen falls from a snow-covered roof in present-day Copenhagen, something about his lone rooftop tracks--and the fact that the boy had a fear of heights--obsesses Smilla Qaavigaaq Jaspersen, a woman who had befriended him. Smilla is 37, unmarried, and, like Isaiah, part of Denmark's small Eskimo/Greenlander community. She is also a minor Danish authority on the properties and classification of ice. Her search for what had frightened the boy leads her to uncover information about his father's mysterious death on a secret expedition to Greenland, a mission funded by a powerful Danish corporation involved in a strange conspiracy stretching back to WW II. As related in Smilla's sober, no-nonsense narration, the plot acquires credibility even as its details become more bizarre. While the novel will probably be compared to Gorky Park , Hoeg has much more to offer, both in terms of his impeccable literary style and in the glimpses he provides of an utterly foreign culture. Its chief virtue, however, is the narrator: Smilla is never less than believable in her contradictions--caustic, caring, thoughtful, impulsive, determined and above all, rebellious. Smoothly translated by Nunnally, this is Hoeg's third novel, but the first to appear in English. A dark, taut, compelling story, it's a real find. Farrar Straus & Giroux 0-374-26644-1 / 9780374266448
Hardcover As New Condition New York
Price:
21.21 USD
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THE HISTORY OF DANISH DREAMS
HOEG, PETER
1996 1160449 From Publishers Weekly Hoeg's first novel is a satiric look at Danish social history. From Library Journal In a series of linked vignettes that move from 16th-century aristocratic arrogance to 20th-century social crisis, Hoeg offers a wildly inventive account of Danish history. He opens with the story of Carl Laurids, a steward's son at the manor of Morkhoj, where time has stood still for four centuries following a decree from the count. Amalie Teander, scion of a newspaper family whose matriarch cannot read but magically predicts the future; Anna Bak, a parson's daughter who seems to be one of God's elect; Adonis Jensen, who veers from the family profession of thievery?all are remarkable creations embedded in an ornate, carefully observed text. In the book's second half, these characters link up in explosive combinations. While profoundly different in style from the suspenseful Smilla's Sense of Snow (LJ 8/93) and Borderland (LJ 8/94), a hard-edged social fable, this new novel?actually, the author's first, though the third published here?sustains Hoeg's attack on conformity and social injustice. A dark but brilliant fairy tale; highly recommended. Delta 0-385-31591-0 / 9780385315913
Paperback - Softcover As New New York, New York, U.S.A.
Price:
15.75 USD
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WOMAN AND THE APE
HOEG, PETER
1996 6974 ABOUT THE BOOK Woman and the Ape FROM THE PUBLISHER From the internationally acclaimed author of Smilla's Sense of Snow comes a dazzling leap of imagination-a tale as sensitive as it is suspenseful, as profound as it is provocative. Madelene, the beautiful, lonely, alcoholic wife of behavioral scientist Adam Burden, is pacing the confines of their opulent London home when she comes upon her husband's secret captive. Erasmus is a 300-pound ape who, if rigorous tests prove him a hitherto unknown superhominid, will be the ruthless Adam's ultimate trophy. But Madelene, intoxicated by their encounter, sets out to unravel the web of corruption that ensnares this intelligent creature. And together, blurring the boundary between human and animal, she and Erasmus venture into an Eden of freedom and love...only to find their future endangered by a species who would let greed and ambition destroy their fragile world. Witty, erotic, magical, The Woman and the Ape is a tour de force, one that offers daring new insight into out times, our illusions, and our hearts. FROM THE CRITICS Publishers Weekly No one will ever be able to claim that Heg doesn't know how to hook a reader. The newest ecothriller by the author of Smilla's Sense of Snow opens with the deceptively simple sentence: "An ape was approaching London." What the vague syntax and flat affect omit could (and does) fill a book. For instance, the "ape"-who's dubbed Erasmus-turns out not to be "some sort of dwarf chimpanzee" as eminent zoologist Adam Burden claims, but a brand new species of ape that just might have the potential for language and higher cognitive functions. The opening line gives little indication of the hubbub Erasmus will raise in a few short paragraphs when he causes the Ark, the ship that has carried him captive to London, to lose its crew and plow mast-first into busy St. Katharine's Dock. Or, a few pages later, when he leads Dr. Burden and his minions on a merry chase through the streets of London. Or, a couple of chapters down the road, when Erasmus seduces Madelene, who just happens to be Burden's beautiful alcoholic wife, and takes her away for a week-long lovefest at a wild animal park. The first line gives no indication of all this because the story and its characters are mere window-dressing for Heg. While he's a fluid writer who is competent at telling stories, it's in the realm of ideas that he excels. There are long passages in which he analyzes Erasmus and human emotions and London itself in terms that are by turns mechanistic and organic. On one page, London is a "gigantic mycelium," a fungus. On a later page, we discover that London is a worn-out machine," full of blind spots and flat points." At the end of this fine and diverting novel, Madelene explains how she's always pictured angels, and her definition could as easily stand for Erasmus or London or even the Earth. "It's one third god, one third animal, and one third human." 100,000 first printing; major ad/promo. (Dec.) FYI: The movie version of Smilla's Sense of Snow, starring Julia Ormond and Gabriel Byrne, is scheduled for release in March 1997. Library Journal From Smilla's Sense of Snow to Borderliners to A History of Danish Dreams, Danish novelist Heg has maintained a sharp sense of social critique that, refreshingly, is not wittily dismisive but earnest without being heavy-handed. And what better way to show up human heartlessness and pretension, particularly of the ruling classes, than in our treatment of animals? In this swift-paced, lacerating new work, an ape brought illegally to England ends up at the home of Madelene, a Danish woman married to Adam Burden, director of the Institute of Animal Behavioral Research. Madelene is young, fresh, and deeply alcoholic, but through the glassy haze that Heg describes so effectivelyfrom the inside out, not simply for dramatic effect but almost as an aesthetic experience, like being in a crystal cageshe can tell the ape is in danger. Madelene sets out to rescue the ape from her coldly calculating husband and his even more frigid Farrar, Straus and Giroux 0-374-29203-5 / 9780374292034
Hardcover As New New York
Price:
15.75 USD
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