From the Mouth of the Whale

In the chilling aftermath of Iceland's Lutheran Reformation in 1635, Jonas Palmason - a poet, naturalist and self-taught healer - has been condemned to exile for heretical conduct. Sitting on a barren island, he contemplates his life in a country that has become gripped by feverish superstition and the cruelty of poverty. He recalls his gift for curing 'female maladies', his exorcism of a walking corpse in the remote county of Snaefjallastrond, the frenzied massacre of innocent Basque whalers at the hands of local villagers and the death of two of his children while his family were on the run. When his exile is suddenly revoked, Jonas finds himself swallowed and spewed from the mouth of a north whale, back onto the mainland. There he returns to the arms of his son and ends his days writing books of poetry and legend. Based on the historical figure Jon Gudmundsson, From the Mouth of the Whale is a magical evocation of an enlightened mind and a vanished age.

ISBN 1846590833   DEWEY edition DC22 ISBN13 9781846590832 (What's this?)   Pages 275 Publisher Telegram Books   Weight (grammes) 249 Imprint Telegram Books   Published in London Format Paperback   Height (mm) 200 Publication date 01 May 2011   Width (mm) 130 Translator Victoria Cribb   Spine width (mm) 19 DEWEY 839.6934   Academic level General

'Hallucinatory, lyrical, by turns comic and tragic - an extraordinary novel.' Hari Kunzru 'Achingly brilliant, an epic made mad, made extraordinary.' Junot Diaz 'Sjon is a poet, and the aesthetic excitement is his own. He is an extraordinary and original writer. And his translator, Victoria Cribb, is also extraordinary in her rendering of the roughness and the elegance, the clarity and the oddity of this splendid book.' A.S. Byatt, The Guardian 'The narrative is kaleidoscopic and mesmerizing, comic and poignant by turns. Victoria Cribb's translation brilliantly captures these multiple changes in tone and scene.From the Mouth of the Whale should open up a world of Icelandic writing...a world of nature and of ideas, which stands comparison with the Iceland of the Nobel Prize laureate Halldor Laxness.' Carolyne Larrington, Times Literary Supplement 'This is an extraordinarily accomplished novel that challenges and informs the reader in equal measure. Victoria Cribb's superb translation conveys the intricacies of Sjon's language, Jonas's strange turns of phrase, and the novel's meandering narrative.' Independent 'A strange blend of myth and reality, it is a spellbinding book, Sjon using lyrical prose to create an other-worldly universe that sucks the reader in.' Big Issue

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