Background
Ib Michael was born on January 17, 1945 in Roskilde, Denmark.
Nørregade 10, 1165 København, Denmark
Ib Michael attended the University of Copenhagen.
Ib Michael was born on January 17, 1945 in Roskilde, Denmark.
Ib Michael attended the University of Copenhagen.
Ib Michael is celebrated in his native Denmark as a writer who has reinvigorated Danish prose. In his novels, short stories, and poems, as well as in travelogues, expository pieces, and even a comic strip, he uses elements of fantasy and popular culture to explore odd interrelationships and hidden knowledge.
Influenced by both magical realism and Taoist thought, Michael’s novels mix fact and fiction with elements from diverse genres, and often present scenes and themes based on the author’s extensive travels in Latin America and Asia. In his earliest novels, not widely read, Michael incorporates the myths and culture of South American Indian tribes into narratives that, according to Hans Henrik Moller in Scandinavica, revitalize the ancient tales. Michael studied Indian languages and cultures at the University of Copenhagen, and in 1975 translated the Quiche-Maya epic legend the Pop it I Vuh, some of the material from which he then used in a comic strip, Det dad guld, which he wrote with Peter Severin. During this period, he also wrote a children’s tale based on Mayan culture, Mayalandet. His 1974 novel Hjortefod, tells the story of the Mexican revolution, and is typical of Michael’s style in its combination of mythology, historical fact, and fantasy. In addition to the historical figures of Emperor Maximilian and Benito Juarez, Michael puts himself and a group of contemporary Danes into the narrative, and remarks on the conditions affecting Mexican Indians today. In addition, he subverts historical fact by creating an alternative fate for the deposed emperor, who he claims escaped death by firing squad to become a circus juggler. As Mdller pointed out, the figures of Maximilian and Benito Juarez merge in the book into a symbolic Soldier who is found throughout several of Michael’s later works.
With Kilroy, Kilroy, Michael began to attract a wider audience. The novel follows the adventures of a World War II American pilot who loses his memory after his plane is shot down in the Pacific. He is rescued by an island tribe who, in the tradition of “noble savages,” save him through their ancient wisdom. He makes his way back to the United States, is hospitalized in a mental asylum, becomes a hippie and war protestor, and ends up involved in the Tibetan freedom movement.
A more autobiographical approach is evident in Vanillepigen. The novel, like Proust’s Remembrance of Things Past, is built on remembrances that are prompted by unexpected sensual events—in this case, the picture of a girl on the label of a spice bag. This image conjures associations with the exotic; the narrator, obsessed with the picture, comes to believe that it represents the young woman who married his seafaring uncle on a South Pacific island. Cutting back and forth between past and present throughout the narrative, Michael explores issues of longing, mutability, and memory as the narrator visits the past and confronts a changed present. The story continues in Den tolvte rytter. A more fantastic novel than The Vanilla Girl, The Midnight Soldier again deals with the origins of the Michael family. It presents the story of their forbear, Gomez, a Spaniard sent to Denmark during the Napoleonic Wars who fathers two children, one with a laundress and the other with a noblewoman.
Though several of his books have been translated into Spanish, German, French, and Swedish, Michael’s first novel to appear in English was Prinz, published in Denmark in 1997 and translated two years later as Prince. The novel, set in a Danish seaside town in 1912, recounts the story of young Malte, a poor boy from the city who experiences an idyllic summer in the village. Reviewers noted touches of magic and myth in this novel, which juxtaposes Malte’s adventures with the story of a mysterious corpse that washes up on the beach and claims a central place in the boy’s imagination.
A prolific novelist, Michael has produced an equally rich and diverse range of nonfiction, including several well-regarded travel books as well as a radio play, a documentary film script, an art exhibition catalog, and a book on environmental politics. He has also published two volumes of poetry, and wrote the libretto for a musical performance piece.