Paperback: Idealistic, misguided Morten Falck is a newly ordained priest sailing to Greenland in 1787 to convert the Inuit to the Danish church.
A rugged outpost battered by unremittingly harsh winters, Sukkertoppen is simmering with the threat of dissent; natives from neighbouring villages have unified to reject Danish rule and establish their own settlement atop Eternal Fjord.
As Falck becomes involved with those in his care - his ambitious catechist, a lonely trader s wife, and a fatalistic widow he comes to love - his faith and reputation are compromised.
The internationally acclaimed novelist Kim Leine charts the tragic events that connect these seemingly disparate lives, while illuminating the brutal and tender impulses of those seeking redemption and the shifting line between religion and mysticism.
In the tradition of We, the Drowned, international bestseller The Prophets of Eternal Fjord (2012) is rich in earthy detail and Dickensian pathos, a visceral panorama of a fragile colony caught in the throes of history. It is the winner of the Nordic Council Literature Prize in 2013 and the Danish booksellers' Golden Laurel award. In 2017, it is shortlisted for the International Dublin Literary Award.
The Prophets of Eternal Fjord is translated from the Danish by Martin Aitken, who is an acclaimed Danish-language translator.
About the author: Kim Leine was born in Norway in 1961, but later moved to Denmark, where he was educated as a nurse. He later moved to Greenland, but returned to Denmark after a number of years. His debut, the eye-wateringly frank memoir Kalak (2007), charted his Norwegian childhood among Jehovah’s Witnesses, his teenage life in Denmark with a sexually abusive father, and his subsequent years of turmoil and drug addiction in Greenland. In November 2018, Kim Leine received the Crown Prince Couple's Culture Prize of DKK500,000 in Aalborg, Denmark.
Kim Leine's latest novel Red Man/Black Man from 2018 is Volume 2 in Leine's Greenland Trilogy and is an independent successor to The Prophets in the Eternity Fjord. Red Man/Black Man takes place in Greenland about 65 years earlier and revolves around the first meeting between the Danes and the Greenlanders. Thus, even more violent confrontations have been made between the two cultures than we experienced in the first volume. The World English rights to his latest novel Red Man/Black Man have recently been sold to publisher Ravi Mirchandani, Picador/Pan Macmillan for publication so do look out for it!
Rating: 5/5
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