Honors and awards

• Bottari Lattes Grinzani’s literary
  award 2015, Italy (winner)
• Edoardo Kihlgren first Prize for
  European Literature  2014, Italy (winner)
• Premio Letteraria Fano 2014,  Italy (shortlist)
• Prix du roman Fnac 2011, France (shortlist)
• Prix du roman Chapitre européen 2011, France (shortlist)
• The Danish Art Council’s Three year grant 2011 (winner)
• Various grants 1998 –

Morten grew up in Copenhagen. The  mother was a lawyer, the father an economist. One grandfather was a painter, a great grandfather was a mountain engineer, who found a massive gold ore in Sibiria and lost it all during the Russian revolution. A great-great-grandfather was the mayor of Copenhagen in the late 19th century.

At the age of 15 the first article was published in the Danish newspaper, Politiken. The following year, the first feature article was published in Berlingske Tidende – which made Morten the youngest contributor since 1749.

In ninth grade of elementary school, he wrote a children´s book The Snail Farm (unpublished).

In 1987, Morten won a short story competition. Shortly followed by other competitions and contributions to the anthologies Beginnings and Erotic stories.

During university years he contributed to Danish and Norwegian newspapers, magazines and periodicals. Mainly articles, features and short stories.

While writing his master thesis at University of Copenhagen Morten and a co-writer wrote the non-fiction book The Jew and the Aryan – in the Nazi film propaganda (Published by Borgen Publishers, 1995).

Morten graduated in 1995 as a MA in Film Science and History.

At the age of 25, he travelled in Indonesia and Northern Australia for 7 months. The events, including two near drowning accidents, visiting the last headhunters on the island of Seram as well as the Komodo dragons, ended up in the travelogue Journey in the rainy Season (written with a co-writer, published by Borgen, 2001).

1997-2000 Morten worked as a director of documentaries and information videos, one of which won a Golden Award at the ITVA Festival.

After suffering the loss of his twins in 2000, Morten decided to start all over, changed career. First as a creator of the political books The Schnaps Parliament 2001 and Schnaps Parliament 2002 (published by Aschehoug). Since as co-founder and creative director the communications agency Tabula Rasa.

Blondanett – a Prostitute´s Diary (2005) was based on interviews and daily dictaphone-recordings of a Danish prostitute. The purpose of the book was to portray the life and thoughts of a mature woman, who gave up her life and job as a nurse to become a callgirl.

In 2006 Morten moved to Mozambique to write his first novel, The Sea in Theresienstadt, about a Danish jew in the German concentration camp Theresienstadt. Published in Denmark (Politikens Forlag, 2007) and later in France (Presses de la Cité 2009) where it was nominated for the Prix du Roman Fnac and shortlisted for the Prix Chapitre du roman Europeen. The book sold around in 44.000 copies in France alone.

In 2011, Morten wrote The perfect Life of William Sidis, a novel based on the life of the famous child prodigy, William Sidis (1898-1944), who had an IQ of 250-300.

Besides Denmark, the book has been also published in Germany (Nagel & Kimsche 2017) Schweitzerland (2017), Austria (2017), Greece (Kedros 2013), in France (Presses de la Cité 2013), in Italy (Iperborea 2014), and son to be published in South Korea.

The novel was awarded the Italian Edoardo Kihlgren first prize for European literature in 2014, and nominated for the literary prize “PREMIO LETTERARIA” in 2014 in the category: Best novel translated into Italian. Winner of the Italian literary award Premio Bottari Lattes Grinzane 2015.

Morten received The Danish Art Council’s “Three-year Grant“. In 2013, he published the novel A girl and a boy inspired by the loss of his twins (Politikens forlag). The novel has been printed in 25.000 copies. In 2014, the book was published in Norway (Spartacus 2014) and Russia (Eksmo – Издательство Эксмо 2017). The book sold 26.000 Copies in Denmark.

2014 he wrote “Tomorrow I stop“, a biography about the Danish Tv-personality, Anja Fonseca, who secretly suffered from bulimia (Politiken publishers 2014). Sold in many thousand of copies.

2015 the non-fiction e-book Films of Evil – The nazi antisemitic Film Propaganda was published (Spitzen publish).

2016. Since his years at Copenhagen University where a fellow student told him about her being raped by a stranger, Morten wanted to write a novel about the victims of a rape.

The first rape is the woman, of course, but research shows that husbands often react in almost the same way with acute stress, shock, and PTSD. It is a subjects extremely rarely depicted in literary fiction. Morten interviewed  both kind of victims. The result is the novel The Victims.