A Dream in Polar Fog - Couverture rigide

Rytkheu, Yuri

Couverture rigide

ISBN 10 : 0974968072 ISBN 13 : 9780974968070

Editeur : Archipelago, 2005

Synopsis

Nursed back to health by Arctic aborigines, a Canadian sailor finds his loyalties torn between his new people and the life he left behind—a novel full of “passion, strength, and beauty of a world we . . . have never understood” (Farley Mowat)

John MacLennan, a Canadian sailor is left behind by his ship, stranded on the northeastern tip of Siberia. Having had his hands amputated, crippled with little hope of returning home, the Chukchi community decides to adopt this wounded stranger and teaches him to live as a true human being. 

From thinking of Chukchi as savages, John comes to know his new companions as real people who share the best and worst of human traits with his own kind. He begins to understand ehri community, respects them, and makes an effort to be accepted as one of them. Though crippled, John rises to the Chukchi view of a person. But how much longer will John commit to this newfound perspective when presented with the opportunity to return to his own past and family?

Rytkheu’s empathy, humor, and provocative voice guide us across the magnificent landscape of the North and reveal all the complexity and beauty of a vanishing world. A Dream in Polar Fog is at once a cross-cultural journey, an ethnographic chronicle of the people of Chukotka, and a politically and emotionally charged adventure story.

A propos du livre

À propos de l'auteur

Yuri Rytkheu was born in Uelen, a village in the Chukotka region of Siberia. He sailed the Bering Sea, worked on Arctic geological expeditions, and hunted in Arctic waters, in addition to writing over a dozen novels and collections of stories. A Dream in Polar Fog was a Kiriyama Pacific Rim Prize Notable Book in 2006. In the late 1950s, Rytkheu emerged not only as a great literary talent, but as the unique voice of a small national minority – the Chukchi people, a shrinking community residing in one of the most majestic and inhospitable environments on earth.

Ilona Yazhbin Chavasse translated Rytkheu’s novel The Chukchi Bible. Born in the former Soviet Union, she now lives in London with her husband and daughter.

Extrait. © Reproduit sur autorisation. Tous droits réservés.

On the morning of September 4, 1910, the inhabitants of Enmyn, a settlement spread out on the shore of the Arctic Ocean, heard an unusual clamor. This was not the cracking of shattered ice, nor the rumble of an avalanche, nor the crashing of stones down the rocky precipices of the Enmyn cape.

Just then, Toko was standing in his chottagin, pulling on a white kamleika. He thrust his arms carefully into the wide sleeves, touching his face to the material, inhaling its smell – had a good airing out in the freez- ing wind. Otherwise all he touched – traps, Winchester, snowshoes – everything would be permeated with that smell.

A crashing noise roared in his ears. Toko quickly stuck his head through the neck-hole, and sprang out of the chottagin in a single bound.

Where, only yesterday, there had been the white people’s ship, a cloud was spreading. There were ice splinters under his feet.

People rushed out from all twelve of the yarangas. They stood in silence, looking out toward the ship, and making guesses about the explosion.

Détails de l'édition

• Éditeur: Archipelago
• Date d'édition: 2005
• Langue: anglais
• ISBN 10: 0974968072
• ISBN 13: 9780974968070
• Reliure: Relié
• Nombre de pages: 337
• Coordonnées du fabricant: non disponible
• Personne responsable: non disponible