Reviews about Peter Høeg

The prolific writer Peter Høeg has transformed his history of Danish dreams and his tales of the night into an out-and-out Danish thriller, combining the best of an Umberto Eco, of a Jules Verne, of a Carrë, mixed with Høegesque specialities plus that singularly sparkling talent for storytelling a la Blixen. One would like to read the 436 pages at a single sitting - the need for sleep and other calls on one´s time make this impossible.

Holger Ruppert in B.T., the 24th of April 1992

To come straight to the point: this thick book with the somewhat dreary title The History of Danish Dreams is in every particular something rather special.
It is as if this novel has liberated itself from all ´official´ duties - in order simply: to tell stories. And the stories that it tells do not resemble many others, even though much of their content has been lifted here, there and everywhere.
We are not used to writers employing such an original and disrespectful imagination in coming to grips with Danish social classes over the last 100-150 years, from castle to tenement. But here they all are - the haves and the have-nots, the privileged and the disadvantaged, the believers and the criminals, the pillars of society and the antisocial. We take in the whole spectrum as, starting in the mid-1800s, we embark on the literary pogo stick hopping towards our own time.

Jens Kistrup in Berlingske Tidende, the 27th of August 1988

Borderliners is an impressive book. Presented by Peter Høeg with his brilliant mixture of suspense and perception, scholarly fixation on detail and enthralling emotions forced into place, frozen, because the pain involved in setting them free is so great. But it is also a harsh book. Because it constructs its world of people and institutions on the foundations of this pain. On emotional exertion and the tortured outlet as revenge, calculated motive and ruthlessness. And in this world no one is better than anyone else. Or worse. Neither agents of the system nor its victims: children, the young. Innocence for them is beyond the realm of time. In a forgotten country, a repressed dimension.

Henrik Wivel in Berlingske Tidende, the 1st of October 1993

The book contains many elegant, cinematic passages. Peter Høeg can describe an ape´s nonchalant-precise movements so that you can actually see them in front of you. And the underlying metaphor of the story is always that of the animal kingdom, humans are animals, animals are humans, while Peter Høeg seeks basic truths about the battle of the species and the sexes. (...) Peter Høeg is a higher consciousness and a higher intelligence. This intelligence juggles masterfully with familiar genres and clichTs, it is a creative and post-modern entertainment in an effective play on fundamental psychological models and well-drawn primary symbolism.

Bjørn Bredal in Politiken, the 31st of March 1996

But are Høeg´s stories just a commentary on philosophy and literature, with no life of their own? Maybe a distinct risk, with so much knowledge and so much style awareness, but it is a risk that he does not run: unruffled and unwavering he uncoils one destiny after the other, preferably as a story within a story, and ends by uniting the framework and essence at a point which unerringly confirms the quantum leap of love: no human being lives in a closed system and thus love cannot be reduced to the laws of thermodynamics.
Peter Høeg´s stories are not ´just´ another successful work of fiction. He is a fully-fledged writer of international calibre.

Søren Vinterberg in Politiken, the 28th of September 1990