Lit in Translation

Beasts of the Sea

Elolliset

Iida Turpeinen (born 1987)

Translated by David Hackston

English editions

In English

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1741: Georg Wilhelm Steller, naturalist and clergyman, sails with Vitus Bering in search of a northern passage from Asia to America. They fail to reach land on the far side, yet Steller describes an enormous grazing sea mammal that will carry his name. 1859: the Finnish-born governor of Russian Alaska, Hampus Furuhjelm, dispatches an expedition after the bones of that creature, thought to have died out a century earlier, for the imperial university. 1952: John Grönvall, taxidermist at Helsinki's natural history museum, must restore one of the few complete skeletons. Spanning three centuries, the story portrays a lost species and humanity's drive to study, depict and bring back what it wiped out.

AI-generated summary

About the book

Form
Novel
Length
296 pages in the original
Genres
Historical, Nature (assigned by AI)
Set in
Russia, United States, Finland, 1741–1952
First published
2023 by S&S
Author's age
36 when first published
ISBN

9789515259776 (original)

9781529438291 (MacLehose Press, United Kingdom)

9780316585835 (Little, Brown and Company, United States)

9781529438314 (MacLehose Press, United Kingdom)

More
Wikidata