Tales of the Night

"The great systems that inform the world about the truth and life invariably claim to be absolutely truthful and well-balanced. In reality they are quaking bridges built out of yearning." Thus, the protagonist of this short story collection's last entry, "Reflection of a Young Man in Balance," sums up what he has come to learn about love, and life in general. However, these could also be the words of almost any character in any of the other tales told here: Admittedly or unadmittedly, they are searching for something, for a defining point or experience in life, and all of them see their lives profoundly unbalanced by that experience. Taking "love and its conditions on the night of March 19, 1929" as his point of reference and as a link between the otherwise unconnected eight stories, Peter Hoeg takes his readers from Denmark around the world to Paris, Lisbon and Central Africa. In a language and in settings somewhere between Dinesen (the obvious comparison), Conrad, Hemingway, Wilde and Poe, the author of "Smilla's Sense of Snow" takes a look at the human condition, society in the first decades of the 20th century, and the dichotomy of science and sentiment, experience and emotion, logic and love. In "Journey into a Dark Heart," a historic train ride in Central Africa turns into a life-changing adventure for a young, disheartened mathematician, with travel companions such as German war hero General von Lettow-Vorbeck, traveling writer Joseph Korzeniowski (a/k/a Joseph Conrad, whose "Heart of Darkness" provides the obvious inspiration for more than just the story's title) and an African servant girl with her own surprise in store for the three men. "Hommage a Bournonville" finds a young Danish ballet dancer on a tiny boat in Lisbon's harbor, telling the story of his lost love to a dervish of Turkish origin cast together with him by fate. In "The Verdict on the Right Honorable Ignatio Landstad Rasker, Lord Chief Justice," a father chooses the occasion of his son's marriage to pass on the story how his own father, a renowned jurist and civil servant, faced up to the demons he had suppressed for most of his life, and which his family thereafter promptly continued to suppress. "An Experiment on the Constancy of Love" juxtaposes a young woman of means and great beauty, an aspiring scientist with a sheer endless disdain for life, and the man who becomes her suitor from their first childhood meeting on and follows her from Paris to Denmark and back to Paris, until their ambitions and sentiments collide head-on in a fatal experiment she has devised. "Portrait of the Avant-Garde" takes a successful, ambitious painter with ties to the rising Nazis to a nightly boat trip into self-discovery off a remote Danish island. "Pity for the Children of Vaden Town" is the story of a city's self-elected utter isolation, and of the pied piper who has come to the town children's rescue - with abounding reminiscences to the Grimm Brothers, Robert Browning, Hans Chr

Before Peter Hoeg wrote his bestselling "Smilla's Sense of Snow," he crafted eight intriguing short stories in "Tales of the Night." It's a tangle of the heart and mind, art and culture, with a dark atmosphere and very good writing. Certainly it's far above the average short story collection. In eight different parts of the world, eight different stories are unfolding on ht evening of March 19, 1929. A young Danish mathematician learns more about the conquest of Africa, when he finds himself on a train with Joseph Conrad and General von Lettow-Vorbeck. A ballet dancer loves and learns about reality. A judge finds himself falling madly in love with a man he's just jailed... for homosexual behavior. A small town is swept by a smallpox epidemic. And through these dark stories run a flurry of artists, students, scientists, Nazis and lovers. Peter Hoeg is a writer for people who like their books deep and intense. There isn't a light or fluffy moment in the whole book. In a way, "Tales of the Night" is all about love. We see love in all its different forms -- pain, learning, redemption and fear. While it isn't obvious at first, the depths of Hoeg's writing becomes clearer on the second or third time around. Hoeg's writing is beautiful -- very thick and slow, and almost dreamlike. It's not something to be read quickly. He weaves in a lot of symbolism and philosophy, without making them "message stories." And at the same time, since the book is set in 1929, he includes some of the political rumblings that came before war. The characters of Hoeg's stories are all loners. Whether they're travellers, lovers, or artists, they all seem to be enclosed in little private bubbles. Not to mention a bit repressed and wrapped up in their own thoughts. Some of them are the sort of people you would despise in real life, but he gives them a sense of humanity and depth. Peter Hoeg was still a newbie writer when he penned "Tales of the Night," but his writing already had polish and depth. Beautiful, dark and sad.

"The great systems that inform the world about the truth and life invariably claim to be absolutely truthful and well-balanced. In reality they are quaking bridges built out of yearning." Thus, the protagonist of this short story collection's last entry, "Reflection of a Young Man in Balance," sums up what he has come to learn about love, and life in general. However, these could also be the words of almost any character in any of the other tales told here: Admittedly or unadmittedly, they are searching for something, for a defining point or experience in life, and all of them see their lives profoundly unbalanced by that experience. Taking "love and its conditions on the night of March 19, 1929" as his point of reference and as a link between the otherwise unconnected eight stories, Peter Hoeg takes his readers from Denmark around the world to Paris, Lisbon and Central Africa. In a language and in settings somewhere between Dinesen (the obvious comparison), Conrad, Hemingway, Wilde and Poe, the author of "Smilla's Sense of Snow" takes a look at the human condition, society in the first decades of the 20th century, and the dichotomy of science and sentiment, experience and emotion, logic and love. In "Journey into a Dark Heart," a historic train ride in Central Africa turns into a life-changing adventure for a young, disheartened mathematician, with travel companions such as German war hero General von Lettow-Vorbeck, traveling writer Joseph Korzeniowski (a/k/a Joseph Conrad, whose "Heart of Darkness" provides the obvious inspiration for more than just the story's title) and an African servant girl with her own surprise in store for the three men. "Hommage a Bournonville" finds a young Danish ballet dancer on a tiny boat in Lisbon's harbor, telling the story of his lost love to a dervish of Turkish origin cast together with him by fate. In "The Verdict on the Right Honorable Ignatio Landstad Rasker, Lord Chief Justice," a father chooses the occasion of his son's marriage to pass on the story how his own father, a renowned jurist and civil servant, faced up to the demons he had suppressed for most of his life, and which his family thereafter promptly continued to suppress. "An Experiment on the Constancy of Love" juxtaposes a young woman of means and great beauty, an aspiring scientist with a sheer endless disdain for life, and the man who becomes her suitor from their first childhood meeting on and follows her from Paris to Denmark and back to Paris, until their ambitions and sentiments collide head-on in a fatal experiment she has devised. "Portrait of the Avant-Garde" takes a successful, ambitious painter with ties to the rising Nazis to a nightly boat trip into self-discovery off a remote Danish island. "Pity for the Children of Vaden Town" is the story of a city's self-elected utter isolation, and of the pied piper who has come to the town children's rescue - with abounding reminiscences to the Grimm Brothers, Robert Browning, Han

Fans of lucid, thought-provoking writing will enjoy Peter Hoeg's offering, Tales of the Night. As in his previous writing, Hoeg's Tales are full of outsiders, people who have learnt that "it may be necessary to stand on the outside if one is to see things clearly." Clearly, Hoeg has done some standing on the outside himself, and in Tales of the Night he shares some of what he has learned.

Peter Hoeg is one of the greatest writers of these years. His simple and fluent language is the ideal medium of a deep, passionate and intelligent storytelling. All the tales of this books take place the 19th March 1929 and tell of love in several different ways, some unbelievable but true as well. And truth is another thing Hoeg presents in its ambiguous and fearful points of view. There is a constant tension between magic and pragmatism, ideal and real, in his pages; a hard and thought provoking research. The tales of Bourneville, Ignatio Rasker and of the poor egocentric painter Simon Bering are masterpieces; wonderfully written, their characters have only one thing in common: a great humanity, in the most complete sense of the word. The story of Vaden By recalls, in its last pages, a bitter sweet fable of Andersen; we see the Great Monsieur Andress as a new Magic Flute player. As a perfect ending, the last dreamy,vaguely Borges-like tale leaves us with the idea that Hoeg's (and our) search has not alredy ended and probably will never.