Tales of the Night
by Peter Hoeg
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Book Summary Information
Author: Peter HoegTranslator: Barbara Haveland
Edition: Mass Market Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 1999-04-01
ISBN: 0140279733
Number of pages: 278
Publisher: Penguin (Non-Classics)
Book Reviews of Tales of the Night
Book Review: Bridges built out of yearning.
Summary: 5 Stars
"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 Christian Andersen and Lewis Carroll.
In "Story of a Marriage," a writer discovers that the public image of perfection is often nothing more than that: an image.
And last but not least, in "Reflection of a Young Man in Balance," a young scientist discovers the destructively revealing power of a perfect mirror.
"Tales of the Night" was written and appeared in Denmark in 1990, as Hoeg's second book (after 1988's "The History of Danish Dreams" and two years before "Smilla's Sense of Snow"), but was published in the U.S. only after the success of his story about the Inuit exile from Copenhagen hell-bent on solving the mystery of the death of a little boy, her only friend. In tone and theme, the two books could not be any more different; yet, like Smilla, Hoeg's protagonists in these tales are loners; outsiders of society, and ultimately, most of them are comfortable in that role and seek solitude rather than social acclaim and popularity. "I learned that it may be necessary to stand on the outside of one is to see things clearly," the narrator of "Hommage a Bournonville" tells his Muslim companion, and he could be speaking for many of them. So, while social norms and conventions are an important backdrop for the experiences made by Hoeg's characters, ultimately it is one person in particular, often a loner like themselves, who provides them with the experience that will change the course of the entire rest of their lives.
Peter Hoeg tells his protagonists' stories with as much intelligence as humility, an occasional sense of humor; and most of all, with great empathy, undying even in their most somber moments. Not all of these tales are immediately uplifting (and Hoeg's successor novels continue to explore the dark side of the human existence); but they provide ample food for thought and are not to be missed.
Also recommended:
Smilla's Sense of Snow
Summary of Tales of the Night
These stories, which vary in theme but all bear the mark of Peter Heg's graceful and thoughtful prose, are set in eight separate corners of the world. On this fateful night, a young mathematician encounters Joseph Conrad during a train ride through the war-torn Congo in "Journey into a Dark Heart;" a pair of star-crossed lovers in Lisbon dance through their memories of the Danish ballet in "Hommage to Bournonville;" a seaside community struggles with the threat of a smallpox epidemic in "Pity for the Children of Vaden Town;" and in "The Verdict of Ignatio Lanstad Rasker," an idealistic young writer is prosecuted for his homosexuality by the conservative Lord Chief Justice of Denmark.Illuminating, acrobatic, and enriched with historical fact and foreshadowing, the stories in Tales of the Night should "consolidate Heg's reputation as one of the world's most versatile authors" (Seattle Times).
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