The Hunter and the Hunted

Having read both From the Mouth of the Whale and The Whispering Muse over the past few months, I was tempted (as mentioned in a previous post) to return my copy of Sjón's final translated work, The Blue Fox, to the local library unread - so that I could read it another time.  In the end though, I couldn't bring myself to do it as I was desperate to read more of the Icelandic writer's tales... and I'm very glad I didn't...

*****
The Blue Fox (published by Telegram Books, translated by Victoria Cribb) is set in Iceland in 1883 and begins with a short chapter describing a hunt over snowy, mountainous terrain.  The Reverend Baldur Skuggason is in pursuit of a blue fox, a rare creature in these parts, and he is determined to bring down his prey.  Over thirty, sparsely-filled, poetic pages (a story which could easily stand alone as a work of fiction), man, fox and nature battle for supremacy in a fight to the death.  But this is just the prelude...

We then move back a couple of days and are introduced to the rest of the characters, among them the educated Fridrik B. Fridriksson and his housemaid Abba.  Fridrik has just finalised the arrangements for his poor servant's funeral after her premature death (related to her Down's Syndrome), sending the coffin off to Reverend Skuggason with the vicar's half-wit assistant.  This part of the story initially appears to have little to do with what precedes it.  When we are granted glimpses into Fridrik's past though, especially of the time when he encountered Abba, the writer begins to drop hints that there is more connecting the two parts of the story than you would expect at first glance...

As we move backwards and forwards in time, learning more about Fridrik's history, life in the small Icelandic town and the epic hunt across the snowy landscape, the writer slowly reveals his intentions.  While the first section of the book appears to show a simple, but elegant, battle of wits between Skuggason and the fox, later events show that things are not quite so clear cut.  The more we read, the more we have to wonder - who exactly is hunting whom?

You've probably guessed this already from the few paragraphs I've written, but I loved The Blue Fox.  It's a slight work, just over 100 pages, many of those containing very little writing, but it is so much more than that.  While barely managing to reach novella length, it is constructed with more flair and imagination than you'd find in most works of five times the size.  At times, particularly in the first part, the text resembles poetry more than prose, black paw-prints punctuating the snow-white expanses of the page, with Sjón's trademark dry humour never far from the surface.  A good example of this is:

"The night was cold and of the longer variety."

p.12 (Telegram Books, 2008)

By the way, that was the whole of page 12...

Once again, praise has to go to translator Victoria Cribb.  I loved her work on the other two Sjón books I've read, and this is another excellent piece of writing, a flawless effort which never feels like a translation.  A token example?  Oh, go on then...

"There was a whining in the air.

     A ptarmigan hurtled past, a hair's breadth from the man, driven before the wind.  It was followed by a falcon, flying high with sure and steady wing-beats.

     The man turned away from the blast, tightened his scarf and wrapped the shoulder strap three times round his right arm so the bag rested tight against his hip.

     He was not too late for the storm." p.12

I think that one thing above all shows how much of a fan I am of Ms. Cribb's work - I didn't even have to open the book to check the translator's name :)

There are a lot of things which I could say about The Blue Fox, but there really isn't much point because it's a short book, and most of the fun would be spoiled by my laying the plot even barer than I already have.  It's great - read it.

Off you go now...

Divine Inspiration from the Frozen North

One of the discoveries of my recent sojourn into shadow judging was the eventual winner of our parallel prize, Sjón, the Icelandic author of the excellent From the Mouth of the Whale.  Having heard that he had another book out in English soon, I crossed my fingers and sent out a begging e-mail (which isn't easy with crossed fingers, let me tell you), hoping for a review copy.  Luckily, Telegram Books took pity on me and my sore fingers and sent me a lovely copy of the new book, The Whispering Muse - and a very good one it is too :)

*****

The rather slender volume, coming in at a delicate 143 pages, chronicles events from 1949, when a rather interesting character, Valdimar Haraldsson, an academic with a monomania linking the superiority of the Nordic races with frequent fish consumption, is invited to take a trip.  As a personal favour, he is to be allowed on a cargo ship carrying paper pulp from Norway to Istanbul, relaxing in a luxurious cabin on a cruise which will take some weeks.  On the first evening of the journey, he is invited to dine at the captain's table, and it is here that he meets an even more fascinating man for the first time - Caeneus: second mate of the MS Elizabet Jung-Olsen and survivor of the good ship Argo...

Each evening, once the dinner utensils have been cleared away, the imposing figure (all six foot nine of him) slowly takes a small splinter of wood from his pocket, listens to it intently for a while, then proceeds to relate the next instalment of his adventures aboard the ship Jason commanded on his quest to reclaim the Golden Fleece.  The small group of officers and workers on the ship listen spellbound to the tales the impressive Caeneus spins, stories of a visit the Argonauts paid to an island inhabited only by women.  Inspired by the scrap of wood, said to be a relic of the old ship, the mate and his whispering muse entertain and enthral his listeners during their enforced delay in Norway.

Haraldsson is initially confused by the respect his fellow passengers show the burly seaman, but eventually he comes to admire his figure and dignity too.  Too full of himself and his own theories though, he sees the nightly tales as idle amusement - until, that is, he begins to feel that there may just be a connection to his own life.  Perhaps Caeneus is telling the stories just for him...

Anyone who has tried From the Mouth of the Whale will know the effect Sjón's blend of lyrical excellence and inspired imagination can have on the reader, and The Whispering Muse is every bit as wonderful and mad as its translated predecessor.  What it lacks in volume - the book is easily read in a couple of hours -, it makes up for with a bagful of ideas scattered like fairy dust throughout the story.  The mixture of Greek mythology, pompous quasi-academic self-importance and Nordic sagas (supported by a healthy diet of fish) is guaranteed to confuse, confound and entertain.

Caeneus, a man who literally and metaphorically towers above his company, is an enigma.  Despite his talent for story-telling, he is actually a taciturn soul, and it is only when the last scraps of dinner have been removed, and the splinter of wood is taken out, that he begins to talk:

"Before embarking on his tales the mate had the habit of drawing a rotten chip of wood from his pocket and holding it to his right ear like a telephone receiver.  He would listen to the chip for a minute or two, closing his eyes as if asleep, while under his eyelids his pupils quivered to and fro." Telegram Books (2012), p.18

He is actually a real character from the myth of Jason and the Argonauts, and you can read all about him on Wikipedia.  Don't do it before reading the book though; if you do, you may spoil a few surprises the writer has in store for you...

Of course, there's more to The Whispering Muse than merely 140-odd pages of amusing story-telling - the problem though is figuring out exactly what themes the cunning writer has woven into the tapestry of his work.  The setting, post-war Europe, could be giving the reader a hint here.  Haraldsson, an Icelander living in Denmark, was a Nazi sympathiser during the war, working in Germany translating propaganda into his native tongue, and there are glimpses in the story of a man, and a region, attempting to come to terms with the end of the conflict.

The story of the Argonauts' visit to Lemnos could also be seen as a sort of parallel to Haraldsson's own stay on the ship.  Both stories are excerpts, interludes in a wider narrative, and when Caeneus tells the crew of the Argo's voyage from the Mediterranean up to the wilds of Ultima Thule, it's difficult not to compare this journey to the one the MS Elizabet Jun-Olsen is about to undertake - or indeed to the one Haraldsson must have endured to get from Iceland to mainland Europe.

One final possibility though is that of sexual awakening, linked to the effects of the war.  Haraldsson is strangely aroused in the presence of the splinter from the Argo, and the stories of the erotic adventures Caeneus and his ship-mates enjoyed on Lemnos eventually spur him on to a change in his lifestyle.  A metaphor for libido overcoming the dampening effects of world conflict?  Let's not take things too far ;)

The Whispering Muse, whatever interpretation you prefer to concentrate on, is another wonderful work by an inventive writer, and having a translator of the ability of Victoria Cribb only makes the book even better.  I loved her rendering of From the Mouth of the Whale, and this is again an excellent translation.  No, I haven't read the original Icelandic (!), but a good translation, as well as transferring the original meaning, is simply a good piece of writing in the new language, and Cribb's translation certainly fits that description.  To just pick out one example:

"Once the ear has fallen asleep, the humming takes on a new form.  It becomes a note, a voice sounding in the consciousness, as if a single grain of golden sand has slipped through the mesh of the sieve and, borne on the tip of the eardrum's tongue, passed through the horn and ivory-inlaid gates that divide the tangible from the invisible world." p.89

Well, I liked it anyway ;)

I have a library copy of The Blue Fox sitting on my shelves, but after enjoying The Whispering Muse, I'm a little reluctant to open it.  You see, while Sjón has written several more pieces of fiction, only three have been translated into English so far.  So, while I wait for Ms. Cribb to get to work on the rest of Sjón's back catalogue, perhaps I should just save my final ticket to his magical world for another time...

Shadow IFFP 2012 - Round-Up Number Three

I'm back with more from the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize longlist, and today we're off to the frozen north for a book about... well, a lot of different things really.  Pack your harpoon, and let's get to it...

***** 
From the Mouth of the Whale by Sjón (translated by Victoria Cribb)

What's it all about?

Jónas Pálmason, an auto-didact in seventeenth-century Iceland, has been banished to a small island, ostensibly for his religious beliefs, in reality for refusing to follow a local leader's instructions to take part in a massacre of visiting whalers.  As he sits on his cold, lonely prison in the Arctic Circle, he watches the natural life around him, spins yarns and fills the reader in on the story of his life.  And it's a very good one.

It's actually quite difficult to really summarise From the Mouth of the Whale - it's not that kind of book.  It's best to just sit back and read it, let the words flow over you and enjoy the magical twists and turns the narrative takes.  The story begins with a short tale depicting the fall of Lucifer from a very different angle to the usual story, and it goes on from there, jumping from descriptions of the grim Icelandic countryside, to short encyclopaedic descriptions of plants, fish, birds and animals (both real and imaginary), to tales of myths and religion.

It's a stunning mix of religion, history, science and mythology, and it reflects very well the state of life at the end of the sixteenth century, where belief in science and unicorns could (and often did) go hand in hand.  At times, it is hard to see where the story is going, but that really doesn't matter.  The book is all about the journey, not the destination - the fact that there is one is an added bonus :)

The thing that lifts this book even further above your usual fare is a sparkling translation by Victoria Cribb, one of those rare, virtually seamless creations that make reading translated fiction a joy.  It can be hard to judge a translation sometimes, especially if it is merely adequate, but when you have a good (or bad!) example, it leaps out at you.  This is a very good one.

From the Mouth of the Whale is a relatively short novel, but it is thoroughly enjoyable and will have you looking Iceland up on Wikipedia for the next week (and possibly looking at the prices of flights to Reykjavik too!).  Be warned though - even in the middle of summer the average temperature is only about 15 degrees Celsius.  Perhaps you should just read some more Icelandic literature instead...

Do you think it deserves to make the shortlist?
Yes.  Next question

Will it make the shortlist?
Yes.  I've heard nothing but good things about this book, which augurs well for its shortlist chances.  The translation, as discussed, is excellent, and that is always an advantage.  Sjón also made the IFFP longlist back in 2009 with The Blue Fox, so he has form, again a bonus.  And he has a cool name.  What more do you want?

*****
That's all for this week - five down, ten to go.  Same place, next week.  OK with you?