From the mouth of the whale
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. Jona Palmason, a poet and self-taught healer, has been condemned to exile for heretical condu...
| Main Author: | Sjón, 1962- |
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| Format: | Books Print Book |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
NY:
Farrar, Straus and Giroux,
2008.
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| Subjects: |
| Summary: |
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. Jona 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 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 his three children. |
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| Physical Description: |
231 p. |
| ISBN: |
9780374159030 |
| Author Notes: |
Born in Reykjavík in 1962, Sjón is the author of the novels The Blue Fox, The Whispering Muse, From the Mouth of the Whale, Moonstone, and CoDex 1962 , for which he won several awards, including the Nordic Council's Literature Prize and the Icelandic Literary Prize. He has also been short-listed for the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award and the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize, and his work has been translated into thirty-five languages. |