SOURCE: Frank, Jeffrey. “Prisoners of Time and Chance.” Washington Post Book World 24, no. 50 (11 December 1994): 9.

In the following review, Frank offers a mixed assessment of Borderliners, lamenting the novel's poor translation into English.

The narrator of Peter Høeg's puzzling and artful Borderliners is someone named Peter Høeg. This Peter Høeg may or may not be the same person as the author, but both are drawn to the mysteries of time—linear time and circular, from the apparent simplicities of childhood to the physics of Newton, Einstein and Hawking. Both Høegs also try to understand the meaning of a “special” Danish private school and how it once affected the lives of three young students. Ultimately, both Høegs try to grasp something elusive about modern Denmark.

Peter Høeg became widely known in America when Smilla's Sense of Snow appeared last year in English. Borderliners, like...