British author Nicholas Evans, famous for his work The Horse Whisperer , has died of a heart attack at the age of 72. The novel, published in 1995, became a huge success worldwide.
Fifteen million copies were sold of the book, which was published in the Netherlands under the title De Paarde whisperer . It has been translated into dozens of languages.
Due to the success of the book, the film followed three years later. In it, Scarlett Johansson plays a teenager who has a serious accident with her horse in the snow. Her horse Pilgrim becomes traumatized. With her mother she brings the horse to a horse listener, a beautiful role by Robert Redford.
Nicholas Evans, whose “Horse Whisperer” became a phenomenon, dies at 72 https://t.co/coAaBsq9wH
— The Washington Post (@washingtonpost) August 16, 2022
Evans got the idea for the story while living as a journalist and TV producer in Devon, in the South West of England. He heard the story from a blacksmith that there were people who could take away trauma in horses by speaking very softly to them.
After The Horse Whisperer , Evans wrote The Loop (1998), The Smoke Jumper (2001), The Divide (2005) and The Brave (2010). In 2008, he nearly died from eating poisonous mushrooms that he mistook for edible. He suffered from severe kidney failure for years and after a long agony received a kidney from his daughter Laura. He was married to Scottish singer and songwriter Charlotte Gordon Cumming and died at his home in Devon.