Prophets of Eternal Fjord: A Novel

by Kim Leine Narrated by Elijah Alexander

Overview

The award-winning, internationally bestselling saga of a Greenlandic community torn apart by the forces of colonialism and the one priest whose wavering guidance will determine its fate

Idealistic, foolhardy Morten Falck is a newly ordained priest sailing to Greenland in 1787 to convert the Inuit to the Danish church. He's rejected the prospect of a sleepy posting in a local parish and instead departs for the forsaken Sukkertoppen colony, where he will endeavor to convert the locals. A town battered by unremittingly harsh winters and simmering with the threat of dissent, it is a far cry from the parish he envisioned; natives from neighboring villages have unified to reject colonial rule and establish their own settlement atop Eternal Fjord. A bumbling and at times terrifically destructive mix of Shakespeare's Falstaff and Nathaniel Hawthorne's Arthur Dimmesdale, he's woefully ill prepared to confront this new sect. Torn between his instinctive compassion for the rebel congregation perched atop Eternal Fjord and his duty to the church, Falck is forced to decide where he belongs. His exploits in this brutal backwater include an accidental explosion after a night curled around a keg, a botched surgery, a love affair with a solitary and fatalistic widow, and an apprenticeship with an eager young scholar that ends in tragedy.

Based on authentic events in the 1780s and 90s, Prophets of Eternal Fjord moves from the quiet rooms of the Copenhagen bourgeoisie to the stark, hardscrabble village of the Fjord where Falck finds himself-surprisingly-at home. In gritty detail, Kim Leine reveals the corrosive effects of colonial rule.

Editorial Reviews

Library Journal

07/01/2015
In 2013, this sprawling, ambitious novel about Danish missionary expeditions to Greenland in the late 1700s won the Nordic Council Literature Prize, chosen by an intergovernmental body and presented to authors writing in Danish, Norwegian, or Swedish. At first glance, the subject matter might seem unpromising, especially to American readers, but this superb historical explores the moral complexities attending religious and economic colonialism in very intimate and powerful ways. The Danish outpost in Greenland where this story takes place is a kind of Sodom and Gomorrah, and the two Danish missionaries at the novel's center are both deeply flawed individuals. The long-tenured priest, Oxbøl, is a sexual predator who has peopled the region with his illegitimate children. The priest sent to replace him, righteous, idealistic Morten Falck, isn't much better, stumbling through his mission and leaving a trail of suffering and disaster in his wake. Leine balances his exploration of colonial destruction with touching moments of human connection and intimacy. VERDICT Epic in sweep and noteworthy for its large cast of skillfully drawn characters, this is a lush, brave book about idealism and faith. [See Prepub Alert, 1/25/15.]—Patrick Sullivan, Manchester Community Coll., CT

Kirkus Reviews

★ 2015-04-15
A pensive, provocative, altogether extraordinary novel of a small-scale clash of cultures and its tragic consequences. Why is it that entirely self-assured, Ahab-like proselytes so rarely figure in fiction? Perhaps because self-certainty is such an unsympathetic trait. No such worries for Morten Falck, a Rousseau-quoting, 37-year-old Danish missionary who lands in Greenland in 1787, a bundle of self-doubt mingled with overbrimming idealism. His arrival was, it seems, preordained, or so a fortunetelling youngster tells him after dunning him for three marks: "I can see a whole lot of strange people dancing in the fells….Black and dirty they are, but they're your friends and you're dancing with them." What else the youngster reveals will give readers pause, but whatever the case, Falck finds not just friendly dancers on the heights above Eternal Fjord, but also a cauldron of heated opposition to the presence of Europeans in Inuit country and the usual human failings, not least the comprehensive ambitiousness of his native catechist. Leine, who won the Nordic Council Literature Prize for this elegant epic, is a poet of Arctic places, conjuring just the right descriptions with economical prose (and ably served by his translator, Aitken): "All night the fog has had its clammy arms and pasty fingers far inside the fjords, but now sudden lagoons of sunlight and clear sky appear, magnificent visions emerge only to vanish again, as surprising as illusions." At the same time, his lyricism extends in some unusual directions, as when he describes the viscera-wrenching effects of the plague and the resultant "inexhaustible landslide of brown." If the ending is inevitably tragic, it is so because Falck cannot curb his paternalistic view of the native people even as they promise him meaningfully that "it is the pale faces in our country who will soon be gone." A boreal classic in the making, brooding and memorable, reminiscent of James Houston's great novel The White Dawn in its narrative sweep and evocation of an unforgiving land.

Product Details

BN ID:	2940169607451
Publisher:	Blackstone Audio, Inc.
Publication date:	08/16/2016
Edition description:	Unabridged

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