- Libris Literatuur Prijs 2023 · Shortlist
Strange and Perfect Account from the Permafrost
Waarachtige beschrijvingen uit de permafrost
Donald Niedekker (born 1963)
Translated by Jonathan Reeder
English editions
In EnglishStrange and Perfect Account from the Permafrost
Sandorf Passage · United States · May 2025 · Paperback · 196 pages
* Affiliate link. As an Amazon Associate and a Bookshop.org affiliate I earn from qualifying purchases. The price stays the same for you.
Bartolomeo, an invented crewman of Willem Barentsz's 1596 voyage, sailed as its poet, meant to celebrate the venture in verse. He was buried in the frozen soil of Nova Zembla after the ship got stuck in the ice, and 425 years on, as global warming thaws his grave, he wakes and finally tells his tale. He recalls the failed search for a new route to China and his youth in sixteenth-century Amsterdam, a town of visionaries, profiteering traders, seditious clergymen and mapmakers possessed by their charts. Tale nests inside tale as he muses on how far human understanding reaches and on our urge to push past it.
AI-generated summary
About the book
- Form
- Novel
- Length
- 211 pages in the original
- Genres
- Historical (assigned by AI)
- Set in
- Russia, Netherlands, 1590s
- First published
- 2022 by Koppernik
- Author's age
- 59 when first published
- ISBN
9789083174402 (original)
9789533515335 (Sandorf Passage, United States)
- More
- Wikidata