Peter Høeg

Peter Høeg (born 17 May 1957) is a Danish writer of fiction. He received a Master of Arts in Literature from the University of Copenhagen in 1984.

Høeg was born in Copenhagen, Denmark. Before becoming a writer, he worked variously as a sailor, ballet dancer and actor (in addition to fencing and mountaineering)—experiences that he uses in his novels.

Peter Høeg published his first novel, A History of Danish Dreams, in 1988 to very positive reviews. In the years that followed he wrote and published the short story collection Tales of Night, and four novels: Miss Smilla's Feeling for Snow (1992), Borderliners (1993), The Woman and the Ape (1996), and The Quiet Girl (2006). It was Miss Smilla's Feeling for Snow that earned Høeg immediate and international literary celebrity. His books are published in Denmark by Munksgaard/Rosinante, now a part of Blackwell Publishing, and have also been published in more than 30 other countries.
In 1993 he won the Danish booksellers award De Gyldne Laurbær (The Golden Laurel) and the Danish Critics Prize for Literature for his book De måske egnede (English title: Borderliners).

Høeg has a reputation for being hard to place in terms of literary style. All his works are stylistically very different from one another, and have been labelled post-modern, gothic, magical-realist, to mention a few. There is a red thread to be found, however, in terms of theme; Høeg's work often seems to deal with the consequences of the progress of civilization.

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