British writer and journalist Nicholas Evans, author of the successful novel The Man Who Whispered Horses, died last Tuesday, August 9, at the age of 72.
A statement released today by the Deadline media said that Evans, also recognized for his work as a journalist and television writer, "died suddenly" from heart failure. “He lived a full and happy life, in his house on the banks of the River Dart in Devon. He was well loved and leaves behind his wife Charlotte and four children, Finlay, Lauren, Max and Harry,” the statement continues.
Born in Bromsgrove, in the English county of Worcestershire, he rose to fame in 1995 with the novel The Man Who Whispered Horses, a work with which he topped the bestseller lists in both the United States and the United Kingdom. .
The success of the book led the American actor Robert Redford to direct a film of the same name in 1998, in which he himself starred alongside Kristin Scott Thomas, Sam Neill, Doianne Wiest and a very young Scarlett Johansson.
This novel was followed by Tierra de lobos (1998), Through the fire (1999), When the abyss separates (2005) and The man who wanted to be brave (2010).
Evans began his professional career with letters in the 1970s as a journalist for the Evening Chronicle newspaper in the town of Newcastle-upon-Tyne, from where he later made the leap to television.
In this medium, he specialized in American politics and foreign affairs in general, which led him to cover the war in Lebanon just before debuting in fiction with The Man Who Whispered Horses.
His experience in Beirut and in international politics also helped him to write his last work, The man who wanted to be brave, in which he addressed family secrets and the "effects of war and the human cost".
Evans took several years to finish this book because in 2008 he was poisoned by ingesting some poisonous mushrooms that he had picked with his wife, singer-songwriter Charlotte Gordon Cumming, and his brother-in-law, Alastair, at his country residence in Scotland.
The author explained that they had eaten the mushrooms at night but began to feel unwell the next morning and realized immediately that they had eaten poisonous mushrooms.
Evans and his wife were about to die, but the writer received a kidney transplant in 2011.
