From the Mouth of the Whale
A Novel
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4.8 • 5 Ratings
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- $11.99
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
From the Mouth of the Whale is an Icelandic saga for the modern age. 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 burned.
Sjón introduces us to Jónas Pálmason, a poet and self-taught healer, banished to a barren island for heretical conduct, as he recalls his gift for curing "female maladies," his exorcism of a walking corpse on the remote Snjáfjöll coast, the frenzied massacre of innocent Basque whalers at the hands of local villagers, and the deaths of three of his children. Pálmason's story echoes across centuries and cultures, an epic tale that makes us see the world anew.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Quixotic adventures of a 17th-century naturalist and physician banished to a remote northern island make up this antiquated novel by the prolific Icelandic author of The Blue Fox (and Oscar-nominated songwriter, for the film Dancer in the Dark). Having come afoul of the Inquisition for his alchemical and exorcist practices, J nas the Learned is stranded with his wife, Sigga, on Gullbj rn Island and unravels the dreamlike narrative of his life: having learned to read in the care of his sage grandfather H kon Thorm dsson, as a young man he acquires the art of healing by treating women and gains a reputation that carries him westward along the Snj fj ll coast. Jonas finds work in towns like Litla-V k, where harpooning stations are established in the summer of 1613 by Basque whalers, at first welcomed, then reviled. By 1635 J nas is languishing in his island exile; despite being rescued and delivered to Copenhagen, where the charges against him are dismissed, J nas is reimprisoned on the island, this time utterly alone. His fate "forever turning with the wheel of fortune," J nas is not unhappy living in harmony with all God's creatures, and indeed this blithe, rhapsodic novel moves backward from the Book of Jonah in the Hebrew Bible to create a work charged with lyrical energy and metaphysical purpose.
