The Whispering Muse
Winner of the Swedish Academy's Nordic Prize 2023
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- £2.99
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- £2.99
Publisher Description
WINNER OF THE SWEDISH ACADEMY'S NORDIC PRIZE 2023
'Funny, strange, provoking and disturbing; darkness with a light touch.' TLS
A master storyteller, Sjón weaves together Greek and Nordic myths with the legacies of the Second World War in this mesmerising novel, which reminds us that everything is capable of change.
Valdimar Haraldsson is an eccentric Icelander with dubious ideas about the relationship between fish consumption and Nordic superiority. To his delight, in the spring of 1949, he is invited to join a Danish merchant ship on its voyage to the Black Sea.
He is less delighted with the lack of fish on the menu. Worse, his fellow travellers show no interest in his 'Fish and Culture' lecture. They prefer the enthralling tales of the second mate, Caeneus, who every evening regales them with his adventures aboard the Argo, on Jason's legendary quest for the Golden Fleece.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In the first and most straightforward of the trilogy, Valdimar Haraldsson is an old man, taking a respite from his life's work of documenting what he believes to be the superiority of Nordic people due to their fish-heavy diet. As a character, he's unlikable, even boring. Yet when he finds himself invited aboard the merchant ship Elizabet Jung-Olsen, on which the nightly entertainment is the lively retelling of Jason and the Argonauts by a fellow shipmate, it is Valdimar's penchant for order that makes the unexpected course of the voyage that much more compelling.
