Connect with us

Celebrity Biographies

peter straub

Published

on

He wrote “The Talisman” with Stephen King, and his solo horror novels had a large readership. Peter Straub passed away on September 4, 2022, at Columbia University Irving Medical Center, in New York. He was 79 years old. His wife, Susan Straub, told The New York Times that his death was due to complications from a broken hip. In addition, her daughter Emma Straub, also a novelist, announced her passing on Twitter.

Born on March 2, 1943 in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, Peter Straub ‘s childhood was marked by the fact that at the age of 7 he was hit by a car, which caused him to be hospitalized for several months, and that he had to relearn how to walk. “The event left me with a premature ray of awareness of my own mortality, my physical frailty, and the sense that the world was not benign,” the writer said in an interview with USA Today in 2002. He earned a Master of Literature from the Columbia University. 

Success came to Peter Straub with titles like 1988’s “Koko,” which focuses on ritual murders taking place in Southeast Asia. He initiates the “Blue Rose Trilogy,” complete with his 1990s novels “Mystery” and “The Throat.” He also wrote collections of poetry and short stories.

Peter Straub is known for writing horror novels such as the 1975 “Julia,” about a woman who feels a supernatural presence stalking her as she mourns the death of her young daughter, which was adapted into the 1977 film Chill , starring Mia Farrow . He achieved great success with Historia macabre , from 1979, about a group of men trying to learn the backstory of the female spirit that haunts them. The text was adapted in 1981, with Fred Astaire as the protagonist.

Perhaps his best-known novel is “The Talisman,” from 1984, co-written with Stephen King , in which a 12-year-old boy tries to save his dying mother by entering a parallel universe. In 2001 both authors repeated the collaboration, with “Casa Negra (Black House)”, a sequel that was also well received. “It is a sad day that my good friend and incredibly talented colleague and collaborator, Peter Straub, has passed away,” King tweeted Tuesday. “Working with him was one of the great joys of my creative life.”

Advertisement