Karl Johannes Eskelund (January 7, 1918 - 1972)

[reviews_and_ramblings]

Karl Johannes Eskelund (January 7, 1918 - 1972) was a Danish journalist and best-selling author who wrote primarily in English. His first book My Chinese Wife (1945) describes his courtship and marriage to Chi-Yun Fei (subject of the book), his lifetime companion. Eskelund depicts their lives during the Japanese invasion of China and behind the American lines in China during World War II. His second book, My Danish Father is an "as told to biography" about his father, Neils Eskelund, dentist for Prajadhipok, King of Siam.

In the 1950s and early 1960s, Eskelund consulted with his publisher on his "travel book projects". They would choose an exotic location unfamiliar to Westerners. Eskelund would research a culture first-hand and write essays about his experiences. With Chi-Yun and their daughter, Mei-Mei, later a Playboy model, Eskelund would spend as long as a year exploring a culture as low budget adventurers. They would live like ordinary natives, suffering daily hardships and facing occasional dangers. Always, Eskelund would incorporate his experience, his family, and people he met in his essays. These were painted with his journalist's eye for detail, and colored by his romantic world view and keen sense of social justice.

Eskelund met and interviewed major non-Western political figures:
Sukarno (Indonesian Adventure)
Jiichiro Matsumoto (Emperor's New Clothes)
Nkrumah (Black Man's Country)
Patrice Lumumba (While God Slept)
Cheddi Jagan (Revolt In the Tropics)
Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, the Shah of Iran (Behind the Peacock Throne).

Eskelund, known for his quick temper and impulsive behavior, once punched Chiang Ching-Kuo, later the President of Taiwan, in the nose!

Eskelund chronicled the experiences of the extraordinary people he interviewed:
Kai Arends, a truck farmer and informal expert on the process for making Ecuadorian shrunken heads.
Perpetual Mountain, a Japanese sumo wrestler who lost a main event because he was "too skinny", weighing "only" 327 pounds.
Diego Rivera, a Mexican artist whose Rockefeller Center mural was destroyed because it portrayed Karl Marx and Lenin.
Henry Wong, a Chinese businessman socially ostracized for refusing to denounce his former American business partner.
"Pedro", who made Eskelund understand the brutal oppression of Portugese rule in Mozambique.
Jack, a Mohammedian Philipino, who brought Eskelund to a village where slavery was openly practiced.

Eskelund's popularity waned as his adventurer persona, and book journalism became anachronisms with the emergence of live television coverage during the Vietnam War. Eskelund's own book chronicling the Vietnam War failed to attract an English publisher and two later books suffered a similar fate.

Prone to depression and alcoholism, Eskelund died by self-immolation virtually fogotten. Most of his books, including two best sellers, are out of print. Twenty years after his passing, Chi-Yun, also an author, published a memoir about their stormy and erotic marriage, Min Casanova.

First Book - My Chinese Wife (1945): My Chinese Wife

Last Book - Midi I En Hashtid, Glydendal, 1969 (Danish only)

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karl_Johannes_Eskelund