Hanna Lützen is crazy about horror stories
By : xxx
Hanna Lützen is
inclined to horror stories. She made her debut as a writer in 1995 with the
Draculian novel Vlad, a paraphrase of
the Dracula-theme. This was followed two years later by the horror stories Rødt til en død Årstid (Red for a Dead
Season) and Horrorfortællinger fra
Holte (Tales of Horror from Holte).
” I’m well aware
that the horror genre isn’t really accepted as a style of writing, and
certainly not as mainstream literature, even though there are great models such
as Edgar Allan Poe and Stephen King. But that doesn’t stop me from writing it. The
genre has fascinated me ever since my student days, and then I discovered that
I might just as well make up horror stories myself,” says Hanna Lützen, who has
a Masters in literary history and is a translator in Gyldendal’s Children’s and
Young People’s Department.
Last year the 36-year-old
writer from Tølløse had a novel set in the Middle Ages, entitled Miraklernes Bog (The Book of Miracles) (Gyldendal),
published. This novel about an albino girl named Krista and the Cistercian
monks of Esrom Abbey demanded extensive research. She is talking about this in
a lecture actually at Esrom Abbey on Tuesday.
At the moment she is
trying to decide for herself whether this year she should write yet another
horror story or a novel set in the Middle Ages, as 1999 has been officially
proclaimed Middle Ages- Year.
”It will probably
result in me writing both novels. The horror story has to be a kind of sequel
to Red for a Dead Season.”
Hanna Lützen
continues to find new depths in the horror-genre, and she hopes that in time it
will become an accepted form in the way that the crime novel has managed to
when it is of quality. It therefore pleases her that she has found someone of
like mind in the horror writer Steen Langstrup, who has had a number of horror
stories published by Høst and Søn.
This article
first appeared in the national daily paper Jyllands-Posten on 11th
January 1999.
Translated by Ian Lukins
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