SOURCE: Høeg, Peter and Karina Porcelli. “Overnight Success: Peter's Sense of Fiction.” Scandinavian Review 82, no. 1 (spring 1994): 19–22.

In the following interview, Høeg discusses his career and the popular success of Smilla's Sense of Snow.

Peter Høeg is not a man of appearances. The 36-year-old Danish author arrives at an appointment via bicycle—not a mountain bike, not a racing bike—but an old, black bike with a plastic bag wrapped around the seat. The number of gears is inconsequential. This is what is important: to spin through the streets of Copenhagen.

For the most popular Danish novelist since Isak Dinesen, discriminating between the essential and the extraneous is important. Especially these days. In his native Denmark, his thriller, Smilla's Sense of Snow, is a runaway best-seller, and he is a frequent, though reticent front-page celebrity. Internationally, his critically acclaimed novel is being launched in 17 countries, and...