From the Mouth of the Whale

✍ Scribed by Sjon; Victoria Cribb

• Book ID: 107342474
• Publisher: Telegram Books
• Year: 2011
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 112 KB
• Category: Fiction
• ISBN-13: 9781846591013

✦ Synopsis

"Achingly brilliant, an epic made mad, made extraordinary."—Junot Díaz

"Hallucinatory, lyrical, by turns comic and tragic, this extraordinary novel should make Sjón an international name. His evocation of seventeenth century Iceland through the eyes of a man born before his time has stuck in my mind like nothing else I′ve read in the last year."—Hari Kunzru

The year is 1635. Iceland is a world darkened by superstition, poverty, and cruelty.

Men of science marvel over a unicorn's horn, poor folk worship the Virgin in secret, and both books and men are burnt.

Jonas Palmason, a poet and self-taught healer, has been condemned to exile for heretical conduct, having fallen foul of the local magistrate. Banished to a barren island, Jonas recalls his gift for curing "female maladies," his exorcism of a walking corpse on the remote Snjafjoll coast, the frenzied massacre of innocent Basque whalers at the hands of local villagers, and the deaths of three of his children.

Sjón was born in Reykjavik in 1962. He won the Nordic Council′s Literature Prize (the equivalent of the Man Booker Prize) for The Blue Fox, which was also longlisted for the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize in 2009. Sjón was nominated for an Oscar for the song lyrics he wrote for BjГ¶rk in the film Dancer in the Dark and has been working on BjГ¶rk's latest project, Biophilia. His work has been translated into twenty-three languages.

From Booklist

Sjón, winner of the prestigious Nordic Council′s Literature Prize and an Oscar nominee for his musical work with BjГ¶rk, presents a lyrical novel set in seventeenth-century Iceland, where poet Jónas PГЎlmason lives in exile on barren GullbjГ¶rn′s Island. Here, with a sandpiper as his only companion, Jónas recalls the varied events and misfortunes of his life while ruminating upon the origins of nature, humanity, and his perpetual thirst for knowledge. A self-taught healer, Jónas hones his craft to treat women′s various ailments. He also recollects subsequent events, from his marriage to his beloved Sigga, who later joins him in exile, to a particularly memorable exorcism of the corpse of a parson′s son, to a harrowing massacre of Basque whalers by fellow villagers. As life in exile begins to wear on Jónas, he is transferred to Copenhagen, where he joins doctor and philosopher Ole Worm to study scientific writings and drawings. Jónas is finally able to experience the freedom, however fleeting, he so desires. Intense and enigmatic, Jónas′ tale unfolds with the power of both myth and memory. --Leah Strauss

Review

РІР‚