Aednan
Description
<b>A <i>Guardian</i> Top 5 Best Translated Fiction Book of the Year
Finalist for the National Book Award for Translated Literature</b>
<b>The award-winning, deeply moving novel-in-verse about the struggle and persistence of two Indigenous Sami families over a century</b>
As borders are imposed in northernmost Scandinavia, a reindeer-herding family is ripped apart. A century later, a young Sami woman leads a bold call for reparations. This majestic verse novel chronicles the fates of two Indigenous families over a hundred years, rescuing from oblivion their stories of loss and resistance.
As one generation succeeds another, their voices interweave and form a spellbinding hymn to lands and traditions lost and reclaimed. Written in sparse, glittering verse that flows like a current,<i>?AEdnan</i> is a profound and moving epic of Sami life.
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<b>Winner of the August Prize for Fiction</b>
<b>'Full of sonorous power yet shot through with an undeniable intimacy... Extraordinary' <i>Washington Post</i>
'Lyrical and ambitious' <i>Guardian</i>
'Crystalline... The music of this book is old, and it is new, and it is old' Tommy Orange</b>
Reviews / Votes
Epic, but also intimate and powerful * Guardian, Best translated fiction of 2024 * Crystalline... reads like poetry and myth at once. There are intricate layers of beauty and meaning here in sparse clusters across a vast new landscape as I've never read before. The music of this book is old, and it is new, and it is old * Tommy Orange, author of 'There, There' * Vividly captures the plight of the Sami people... Lyrical and ambitious... AEdnan contains echoes of epic poems and Norse sagas but also feels contemporary and accessible... bold and original * Guardian * Remarkable... Like the best epics, Aednan is a story not just of a people but also of people, full of sonorous power yet shot through with an undeniable intimacy... Extraordinary * Washington Post * Mesmerising. A beautiful, poetic weaving of language, character and place... Evocative and heart-breaking -- Audrey Magee, author of 'The Colony' Moves as gracefully as a waterfall... This unique novel beautifully conjures losses and transitions within the flickering shadows of language * Irish Times * A soul-gripping and enthralling journey into what it feels like to be othered in your own land... Axelsson offers us a profound invitation into understanding what it means to be deeply intertwined with nature -- Lola Akinmade Akerstroem, author of 'In Every Mirror She's Black' A sharp-edged tale in verse of colonial suppression, resistance, and survival * Kirkus Reviews, starred review * Incredibly beautiful and magnificent... With AEdnan, Swedish literature has been enriched * Dagens Nyheter * Not only a linguistic adventure, innovative and rooted in both traditions and renewal, but also a statement that we are bigger and freer than the borders that shut us out from each other... Remarkable and magnificent * Norrtelje Tidning * Eagerly as with any page-turner, I rush through the century that Axelsson's poem encompasses * Svenska Dagbladet * A work that is unlike anything else in contemporary Swedish literature. It is a family chronicle, a political history, an indictment - in verse, albeit a free one. An epic, quite simply... Axelsson boldly writes herself into a time-honoured tradition * Sydsvenskan *More details
Persons
Saskia Vogel is a writer and translator from Los Angeles, now living in Berlin. Her debut novel Permission was published in five languages, and she has translated over twenty books from Swedish into English.