Greenland
A Novel
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4.0 • 5 Ratings
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- $8.99
Publisher Description
Shortlisted for the 2023 Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction
A dazzling, debut novel-within-a-novel in the vein of The Prophets and Memorial, about a young author writing about the secret love affair between E.M. Forster and Mohammed el Adl—in which Mohammed’s story collides with his own, blending fact and fiction.
In 1919, Mohammed el Adl, the young Egyptian lover of British author E. M. Forster, spent six months in a jail cell. A century later, Kip Starling has locked himself in his Brooklyn basement study with a pistol and twenty-one gallons of Poland Spring to write Mohammed’s story.
Kip has only three weeks until his publisher’s deadline to immerse himself in the mind of Mohammed who, like Kip, is Black, queer, an Other. The similarities don't end there. Both of their lives have been deeply affected by their confrontations with Whiteness, homophobia, their upper crust education, and their white romantic partners. As Kip immerses himself in his writing, Mohammed’s story – and then Mohammed himself – begins to speak to him, and his life becomes a Proustian portal into Kip's own memories and psyche. Greenland seamlessly conjures two distinct yet overlapping worlds where the past mirrors the present, and the artist’s journey transforms into a quest for truth that offers a world of possibility.
Electric and unforgettable, David Santos Donaldson’s tour de force excavates the dream of white assimilation, the foibles of interracial relationships, and not only the legacy of a literary giant, but literature itself.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Donaldson's assured debut finds Kip Starling, a Black queer man of Caribbean descent, writing a novel about E.M. Forster's love for a Black man named Mohammed El Adl. But Kip, who has locked himself in his Brooklyn basement with a gun, is battling writer's block. In addition, his white husband, Ben, wants a divorce, and he's estranged from his best friend, Concha ("If you close your eyes, you can't tell it's not Emma Thompson speaking," he says of her). Donaldson juxtaposes lengthy passages from Kip's novel on racism and invisibility with Kip's own experiences with microaggressions. Later, he boards a plane for London, which makes an emergency landing in Greenland. There, he meets a gay Black man named Mohammed who wants to take Kip into the wilderness to build an igloo "where no white man will reach us. Where we can finally be who we really are." The multiple story lines intrigue, and the writing—"the thick air clung to my skin... like a jilted lover"—is crisp, but Donaldson overstuffs the narrative with ideas to the point that it loses shape. The author clearly has talent, and his work's many fine points suggest he's one to keep an eye on.
