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WORK TITLE: The Hermit
WORK NOTES: trans by K.E. Semmel
PSEUDONYM(S):
BIRTHDATE: 1974
WEBSITE:
CITY: Fredensborg
STATE:
COUNTRY: Denmark
NATIONALITY: Danish
http://www.nordinagency.se/clients/fiction/thomas-rydahl/ * https://oneworld-publications.com/thomas-rydahl.html * https://scandinaviancrimefiction.wordpress.com/2017/01/02/the-hermit-by-thomas-rydahl/
RESEARCHER NOTES:
PERSONAL
Born 1974, in Aarhus, Denmark; married; children: two.
EDUCATION:Danish Academy of Writing, graduated, 1999.
ADDRESS
CAREER
Writer and translator. Has worked as a firefighter, bartender, and proofreader. Has also worked as communications strategist.
AWARDS:Danish Debutant Award, Glass Key Award for best Nordic crime novel, Harald Mogensen Prize for best Danish crime novel, all for The Hermit.
WRITINGS
Has written a YA novel and short stories.
SIDELIGHTS
Danish writer Thomas Rydahl studied philosophy and psychology and graduated from the Danish Academy of Writing in 1999. He has written short stories and a young-adult novel and works in the field of communication strategy. A family trip to the island of Fuerteventura provided inspiration for his debut adult novel, the thriller The Hermit. The novel’s protagonist, Erhard Jørgenson, has been living alone almost twenty years on Fuerteventura, in the Canary Islands, when he is drawn into they mystery surrounding the death of an infant, who turns up in a car on the beach. Slowly he finds himself in a quagmire of beauracratic corruption in his search for the truth.
Michel Leber, writing in Booklist, called the novel “remarkably assured” and a “superb blend of literary and crime fiction.” In Publishers Weekly, a reviewer found The Hermit “stunningly conceived and expertly executed.” The reviewer also commented that “not even a self-isolated hermit can be an island unto himself.” Portia Kapraun, critiquing the novel in Xpress Reviews, observed that the novel’s pace is “methodical and deliberate” and that “it will keep readers guessing until the very end.” An online contributor to Scandinavian Crime Fiction found the translation “excellent” and noted that “readers who stick with it are likely to find themselves caught up in Erhard’s offbeat world view and in his quest.” The critic concluded that “it certainly adds something new to the Nordic noir palette and is, in its weird way, compelling.” Lynn Harvey, correspondent in Euro Crime, termed this a “fascinating novel, rich in characters, which combines menace with empathy as it twists towards its conclusion driven by Erhard’s impulsive, unpredictable character and his struggle with his own entrenched ‘Hermit’ existence.” A critic in Kirkus Reviews Online pronounced The Hermit “a languid stroll with a sage detective through vivid locales that leaves a lasting impression.”
BIOCRIT
PERIODICALS
Booklist, October 1, 2016, Michele Leber, review of The Hermit, p. 29.
Publishers Weekly, September 12, 2016, review of The Hermit, p. 36.
Xpress Reviews, October 28, 2016, Portia Kapraun, review of The Hermit.
ONLINE
Euro Crime, http://eurocrime.blogspot.my/ (October 20, 2016), Lynn Harvey, review of The Hermit.
Kirkus Reviews Online, https://www.kirkusreviews.com/ (August 22, 2016), review of The Hermit.
Scandinavian Crime Fiction, https://scandinaviancrimefiction.wordpress.com/ (January 2, 2017), review of The Hermit.*
Thomas Rydahl, born in Aarhus 1974, has been writing since childhood. He has a colourful career behind him and in 1992 won a major short story competition, with the YA novel Forever Young. Rydahl has studied philosophy and psychology, in addition to being trained as a fire-fighter. Aside from that he has also worked as a bartender, translator and proof reader. He graduated from the Danish Academy of Writing in 1999, where he published a number of short stories.
Since 2001 Thomas has worked with story storytelling and strategy in communication. He lives north of Copenhagen together with his wife and two children, four cats a dog and a hamster. Most of the animals are named after food items. Thomas loves twilight runs, he prefers beer from local breweries and he occasionally plays the saxophone.
It was a Family trip to the island of Fuerteventura that gave him the idea for The Hermit. When he was waiting for his luggage after a taxi ride, he spotted the driver’s guitar lying in the trunk of the car – this inspired Rydahl to create his character Erhard. As he worked with the character and the location Thomas formed the idea for a number of stories that all play out on Fuerteventura.
Glass Key award winning The Hermit is the first novel featuring Erhard in a planned trilogy where the next book is set to be published in Denmark in 2016.
THOMAS RYDAHL is a writer and translator. The Hermit is his debut novel and was awarded the Danish Debutant Award, the first time in the award's history that it has gone to a thriller. The Hermit has since gone on to win the prestigious Glass Key Award for the best Nordic crime novel and the Harald Mogensen Prize for the best Danish crime novel. Thomas lives with his wife and daughter in Fredensborg, Denmark.
The Hermit
Michele Leber
113.3 (Oct. 1, 2016): p29.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2016 American Library Association
http://www.ala.org/ala/aboutala/offices/publishing/booklist_publications/booklist/booklist.cfm
* The Hermit.
By Thomas Rydahl. Tr. by K. E. Semmel.
Nov. 2016.480p. Oneworld, $21.99 (9781780748894); e-book (9781780748900).
[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]
An unlikely man is on a quest for justice in this literary crime novel. Title character Erhard Jorgenson, who's spent nearly 18 years of solitary life on the Canary Island of Fuerteventura (his backstory in Denmark is never fully revealed), is stricken when the body of a three-month-old boy is found in a car in the water off a beach. Erhard, a piano tuner and taxi driver who's envied for his uncanny ability to find passengers, is contacted by police when scraps of a Danish newspaper are found covering the boy's body. But when he learns that the authorities, under pressure to close the case, have bribed a local prostitute to take responsibility for the infants death, Erhard intervenes, initially just detaining the woman but gradually becoming sucked into a morass of corruption and crime. Even in his older age, the intuitive Erhard is absolutely dogged in seeking the truth about the boy's death as he risks virtually all that he holds dear.
This remarkably assured debut novel, a superb blend of literary and crime fiction, has won fiction awards and been a best-seller in Denmark, with film and TV rights already sold and a sequel promised.--Michele Leber
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
Leber, Michele. "The Hermit." Booklist, 1 Oct. 2016, p. 29. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA467147987&it=r&asid=e473fcae4c5ac8c97432ce9384941346. Accessed 1 June 2017.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A467147987
The Hermit
263.37 (Sept. 12, 2016): p36.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2016 PWxyz, LLC
http://www.publishersweekly.com/
* The Hermit
Thomas Rydahl, trans. from the Danish by K.E. Semmel. Oneworld (PGW, dist.), $21.99 (496p) ISBN 978-1-78074-889-4
[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]
Erhard, the 60ish hero of Rydahl's brilliant, scathing debut, which won the Glass Key Award in 2015 for best Nordic crime novel, is a down-at-heels expatriate Danish cabbie and sometime piano tuner. This "old man with tired eyes" has lived in a shack on Fuerteveiitura, one of the Canary Islands, with only two skittish goats for company for about 20 years. He sends much of his meager earnings to his ex-wife and daughters in Denmark, drinks too much, and occasionally scavenges dumpsters for food. When a three-month-old baby boy is found starved to death in a cardboard box in a car that washes up on the beach, Erhard is outraged. With virtually no resources, lacking a computer and the savvy to use one, but drawing on his own wits and calling in a multitude of favors, Erhard doggedly traces the dead baby's mother and uncovers a complex smuggling scheme. Stunningly conceived and expertly executed, this portrayal of one man's thirst for justice in the face of human corruption proves that not even a self-isolated hermit can be an island unto himself. Agent: Jacob Busch, Busch Agency (Denmark). (Nov.)
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
"The Hermit." Publishers Weekly, 12 Sept. 2016, p. 36. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA464046244&it=r&asid=ad499f0b0c800b925e1d1334cab66dbd. Accessed 1 June 2017.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A464046244
Rydahl, Thomas. The Hermit
Portia Kapraun
(Oct. 28, 2016):
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2016 Library Journals, LLC
http://www.libraryjournal.com/lj/reviews/xpress/884170-289/xpress_reviews-first_look_at_new.html.csp
Rydahl, Thomas. The Hermit. Oneworld. Nov. 2016. 480p. tr. from Danish by K.E. Semmel. ISBN 9781780748894. $21.99; ebk. ISBN 9781780748900. F
[DEBUT] Erhard Jorgenson is a Danish expatriate working as a taxi driver and part-time piano tuner in the Canary Islands. His simple, solitary lifestyle has earned him the nickname of the Hermit, attracting both admiration and scorn from local residents. When a car is found crashed on a local beach, with the body of a small boy in the trunk, the police are under pressure to wrap up the case quickly and quietly so as not to upset the tourists. With no leads, they try to sweep it under the rug, but Erhard finds he cannot let the case go. Erhard is not the usual detective. Nearing 70, the Hermit has a checkered past and no knowledge of modern technology, and his questioning of witnesses is far from discreet. As he gets more involved, and becomes more unhinged, he is caught up in a sordid world of prostitution, organized crime, uncaring fathers, and rebellious sons.
Verdict Danish short story author and translator Rydahl's debut novel, which won the Glass Key Award for the Best Nordic Crime Fiction 2015, does not progress at breakneck speed but moves along at Erhard's methodical and deliberate pace. Unfolding one unexpected clue at a time, it will keep readers guessing until the very end.--Portia Kapraun, Delphi P.L., IN
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
Kapraun, Portia. "Rydahl, Thomas. The Hermit." Xpress Reviews, 28 Oct. 2016. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA470560038&it=r&asid=f269ff06f0d630ec6616079b20115a2c. Accessed 1 June 2017.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A470560038
The Hermit by Thomas Rydahl
Posted on January 2, 2017 by Barbara
Well, this is embarrassing. I’ve really let things go around here. You’d think I turned into a hermit. Well, in keeping with that notion, here’s my review of Danish author Thomas Rydahl’s first novel, reposted from Reviewing the Evidence.
1780748894THE HERMIT
by Thomas Rydahl and KE Semmel, trans.
Oneworld, November 2016
469 pages
$21.99
ISBN: 1780748894
Readers of Scandinavian crime fiction, skimming through recent translations, may be thinking it’s nothing but clones of Mankell and Läckberg, a too-familiar choice between gritty social problem procedurals or convoluted crimes committed on scenic islands – yawn. Thomas Rydahl has written something different.
First, there’s no snow. THE HERMIT is set on one of the lesser-visited of the Canary Islands. That’s not entirely original; Mari Jungstedt has set a new series there, too, among the large Swedish expatriate community. But Rydahl’s protagonist is not your typical detective. Erhard Jorgenson lives in a shack with two goats for company, drives a rattletrap cab, and lives on next to nothing. He’s no longer connected to his native Denmark, where he left behind an estranged family and one of his fingers. (How exactly he lost that finger is a tease from the opening pages – but not particularly relevant to the plot, like so very much in this book.) There are police, but they are not dogged investigators so much as public servants sensitively tuned to the need for tourism and quickly-closed cases. And there isn’t any CSI wizardry. Not only does our hero lack access to forensic labs, he doesn’t know how to use a cell phone or a computer. He has left the world behind, apart from picking up fares when he feels like it, tuning pianos occasionally, and drinking with a happy-go-lucky couple.
Three things go wrong early on. First, Erhard comes on a fatal car accident where a pack of wild dogs is making a meal of the dead driver. Then a car is found on a beach, which has in it the body of an abandoned infant in a cardboard box, nestled in torn-up Danish newspapers. Finally, Erhard loses his drinking pals when the man disappears and the woman lapses into a coma after a savage beating.
Erhard’s response to these events is as peculiar as he is. He takes a finger from the man killed in the accident to replace his missing one. He thinks the police are covering something up about the dead infant, so he kidnaps the prostitute who is their prime suspect and holds her in chains to compel her to tell him the truth. And when he realizes his friend is gone and his wife is unconscious . . . well, explaining how he handles that conundrum would be a spoiler. Suffice it to say, this is an unusual book with an eccentric hero who wants very badly to know how that child ended up abandoned and, through a combination of persistence and intelligence, manages to untangle a complicated story.
This novel suffers from the acute global shortage of red pencils in the publishing world. Hundreds of pages relate Erhard’s shambolic daily life in detail, and the dialogue would be less exasperating to read if it were in quotation marks instead of being signaled with a literary dash, Cormac McCarthy-style. That said, readers who stick with it are likely to find themselves caught up in Erhard’s offbeat world view and in his quest to discover how that car and its tragic cargo ended up on a remote beach. S.E. Semmel’s translation of the first debut novel to win Scandinavia’s top award for crime fiction is excellent. Whether its enormous popularity in Denmark will travel is yet to be seen, but it certainly adds something new to the Nordic noir palette and is, in its weird way, compelling.
Thursday, October 20, 2016
Review: The Hermit by Thomas Rydahl tr. K E Semmel
The Hermit by Thomas Rydahl translated by K E Semmel, October 2016, 480 pages, Hardback, Oneworld Publications, ISBN: 1780748892
Reviewed by Lynn Harvey.
(Read more of Lynn's reviews for Euro Crime here.)
For a long time he just wanted to be left alone. Without smiling. Without any kind of pleasure. Not even the sunshine or the starlight. He lay quietly, dispassionately observing the sky. But in the end this proved difficult. In the end the small pleasures found him.
New Year’s Eve, Fuerteventura, Canary Islands.
The mountainside surrounding Erhard’s shack is completely dark and silent. It’s why Erhard Jørgensen, el ermitano, has loved living here for nearly eighteen years. Just him and the two goats, Laurel and Hardy. After more drinking Erhard decides he needs a girlfriend; a warm body, company. But he doesn’t have much to offer. In a few years she would have to empty his pot, shave him and pull off his shoes at the end of a day’s driving the taxi. Erhard thinks of Raul and Beatriz preparing for their New Year party, an invitation he refused. Beatriz’s perfume. No, he will think about the hairdresser’s daughter whom he has never met and seen only once; think of her sitting at his dinner table. Much too young. Thirty years difference. Not his type. He doesn’t know why he thinks of her so much. It must be the fault of her mother, the hairdresser. She is always talking about her, suggesting it’s time she found someone, someone like him. She even tells him where her daughter lives. Maybe he should drive over there now. Invite her out, get this over with. Erhard knows its the drink talking but he gets up and jams his legs into a pair of trousers from the clothes line. The goats run off into the darkness.
Erhard’s car hurtles down the mountain track towards the city and he swerves to avoid a goat. Was that Hardy? Surely not so far from the shack? Distracted, he doesn’t notice the oncoming car until too late. It swooshes past him, knocking his side mirror flat. He shouts at the car in Danish, rolling down his window to straighten the shattered mirror. That car looked like Bill Haji’s. Never mind, he must get to the hairdresser’s daughter.
The windows of her apartment are dark. Erhard walks to a familiar bar, orders a Rusty Nail and buys a round for the two olive farmers in the corner. At a quarter to midnight, he pays his bill and walks back to the hairdresser’s daughter’s flat. He can hear quiet sounds within the apartment and he raps on the door, catching sight of his wrinkled face in the nameplate as he does so. What has he got to offer? “I’m coming,” calls a soft voice from inside the apartment. And Erhard panics, running down the stairs and into the street, hugging the walls, fumbling his way into his car. He drives out of the city, back to his mountain, foot to the floor and only applies the brakes when his headlights pick out a giant turtle shape in the middle of the rough track. Bill Haji’s car, upside down, shattered windows, one of its doors hanging open. Erhard gets out. The sky explodes with the city’s midnight fireworks and as his eyes readjust to the darkness Erhard spots movement around the upturned car. Wild dogs, perhaps part of a pack still out there in the darkness. And he sees Haji’s body, what’s left of his face. Then a glint in the darkness, gold, a spark ignited by the firework bursts: Haji’s distinctive ring, on the ground near one of the wheels – embedded into the flesh of Haji’s severed finger. Erhard reaches for the finger. The feasting dogs growl. He goes back to his car and presses its wheezing horn, enough, momentarily, to drive the dogs away. He hurries back, lies down, stretches out and reaches for the finger whilst staring into Haji’s ruined face and eyes. Find the boy. A voice clear in his head. The whining of the dogs becomes agitated. He grabs the finger and backs off to his car. Nine plus one equals ten; his own nine fingers and Bill Haji’s one. Ten fingers. He is whole again...
The plot trigger for Erhard Jørgensen – 67 years old, Danish ex-pat, nine-fingered piano tuner, taxi driver and central figure of Thomas Rydahl’s novel THE HERMIT – is a drunken excursion with his friends, Raul and Beatriz, one stormy night, to watch the lightning down on the coast. But they find instead a crowd gathered round the spectacle of a stranded car. A police team with lights are examining its back seat and a cardboard box containing the body of a dead infant in a nest of newspaper cuttings – Danish newspaper cuttings. Soon the police are at Erhard’s door, asking for help with translating the cuttings found with the dead child. But when they quickly close the case – who wants the tragic story of a child’s death in a resort struggling to keep its tourist trade? – Erhard is driven to find answers. How did the car get onto the beach? Where and who is the mother? The hunt draws Erhard into conflict with powerful, unscrupulous men. It also begins the slow, painful process of stripping him of his Hermit status and forcing him back into some kind of relationship with the world.
Danish writer and translator Thomas Rydahl’s own inspirations are writers such as Paul Auster, Haruki Murakami and the character-strong qualities of Stephen King. Even though would-be publishers asked for more of a genre approach in his novel writing, it wasn’t his intention to write a crime novel. But one day he spotted a guitar in a cab-driver’s boot and Erhard Jørgensen was born. And in telling Erhard’s story, Rydahl found he had become “a crime writer”. So much so that in 2015 THE HERMIT became the first début novel to win a Glass Key Award for Best Nordic Crime Novel. Television rights have already been sold and Rydahl has finished the second in what he hopes to be a trilogy featuring Jørgensen.
THE HERMIT reads well in this translation by K E Semmel – translator of Karin Fossum and Jussi Adler Olsen amongst others. It is a fascinating novel, rich in characters, which combines menace with empathy as it twists towards its conclusion driven by Erhard's impulsive, unpredictable character and his struggle with his own entrenched “Hermit” existence. A big book, I nevertheless loved reading it and can’t recommend it highly enough to fans of Nordic Noir searching for a warmer climate.
Lynn Harvey, October 2016
THE HERMIT
by Thomas Rydahl, translated by K.E. Semmel
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KIRKUS REVIEW
A nine-fingered part-time piano tuner, Canary Island cab driver, and self-appointed investigator ambles through a case involving the death of an infant.
If Danish debut author Rydahl is launching a series, he’s come up with a winner in what would be its first installment. (The book garnered the Danish Crime Glass Key Award.) Rydahl centers on a canny, idiosyncratic protagonist, Erhard Jorgensen, who will charm readers. Jorgensen subsists on tinned food—eaten from the tin—and nightly tucks under his pillow a finger he found at an accident site; he hopes to pass it off as his missing tenth digit. Nearing 70, Erhard may be the eponymous hermit to some on the island, but it’s clear that as a taxi driver involved with his neighbors and co-worker, the term is a misnomer. His ties to humankind emerge when he discovers an infant, probably 12 weeks old, in a car abandoned on a beach. How and why did this happen? Where are the parents? Haunted by the image of the baby, Erhard goes after the case—and in his own fashion. When police tell him they’ve found the culprit, a prostitute named Alina, Erhard insists they’re just trying to avoid a PR disaster because tourism is down. To deny the police evidence, he kidnaps the working girl, musing that prostitutes “sell oneself in bite-sized chunks garnished with one’s soul.” Then he finds Alina brutally murdered. To keep police unaware the prostitute is dead, Erhard disguises her corpse by stripping the body of his friend Beatriz, beaten unconscious by unknown thugs, and putting her clothes on Alina. Meanwhile, Beatriz’s boyfriend Raul, who works for an island crime syndicate, goes missing. The case doesn’t exactly hurtle to its melancholy finish, but Erhard’s wry musings and Rydahl’s high-resolution images of the island help the reader to settle into the deliberate tempo.
A languid stroll with a sage detective through vivid locales that leaves a lasting impression.
Pub Date: Nov. 8th, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-78074-890-0
Page count: 480pp
Publisher: Oneworld Publications
Review Posted Online: Aug. 22nd, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1st, 2016