Axelsson Aednan

An Epic
1. Auflage 2024
ISBN: 978-1-80533-132-2
Verlag: Pushkin Press
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 6 - ePub Watermark

E-Book, Englisch, 432 Seiten

A Guardian Top 5 Best Translated Fiction Book of the YearFinalist for the National Book Award for Translated Literature The award-winning, deeply moving novel-in-verse about the struggle and persistence of two Indigenous Sámi families over a century As borders are imposed in northernmost Scandinavia, a reindeer-herding family is ripped apart. A century later, a young Sámi 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,?Ædnan is a profound and moving epic of Sámi life. ______________________ Winner of the August Prize for Fiction 'Full of sonorous power yet shot through with an undeniable intimacy... Extraordinary' Washington Post'Lyrical and ambitious' Guardian'Crystalline... The music of this book is old, and it is new, and it is old' Tommy Orange

Linnea Axelsson is a Sámi-Swedish writer, born in the province of North Bothnia in Sweden. In 2009, she earned a Ph.D in art history from Umeå University. In 2018, she was awarded the August Prize for Ædnan. She lives in Stockholm, Sweden.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.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Axelsson, Linnea

Weitere Mitwirkende

Vogel, Saskia

Leseproben

III

Through the Rostocearru mountain pass. Spring 1913

(ber-joná)

The expanses

their boundlessness

the reindeer herder cairns

–

Backs that burned

and feet

like bundles

–

Beating

our canes

to frighten

off the wolverine

–

On a sunny spring hill

rested our

pregnant does

–

We heard

heartbeats in the ground

Faint

beneath the inherited

migration paths

–

our son Aslat and I

–

Aslat would follow

the future’s ground

–

It had not yet been

born into the world:

It would come

from the lives of our does

–

The wind had a long talk

with the tent’s tarp

–

We look up

through the smoke hole

see the clouds

–

gliding by

–

A wide-awake doe

shakes her coat

until it whirls

Another stretches

her joints

–

They’re grazing

So they will

stay calm for at least

another hour

–

Once they’ve woken up

properly

they’ll keep

heading west

–

Into the mountains

to the calving grounds

–

Teeth mashing

milling their feed

The calves in wetness

treading

the heat

of the as-yet unborn

–

Our dark-headed son’s

landscape

–

Ski stroke by ski stroke

song after song

we spread out the

landscape of our kin

in his body

–

Singing forth

the world around us

–

We sang the mountain

that looked like

an old woman

–

The hiding places

and fear

we sang

when the Swede

had gone to war

–

Against our

well-worn drum

–

The sky brightened

And we sang

father’s father

–

sun

in hand

–

The hot

southern cliffs where

the spring bears

had their daytime dens

were sung forth

–

The meltwater

rippling

by the windbreak

–

Our son’s light

singing voice

in which our kin’s and

the land’s memories

wished to fasten

–

Glided away

like the clouds toward you

Ristin

–

Trailing far behind

With the other families

headed for our spring camp

–

And the weak

boy

who had

to travel with you

and not us

–

His gaze like

the sea

which I had taught

myself to love

–

A cleansing bath

that gaze of his

–

We sang the work

and the reindeer

who led our family

apart

–

The reindeer who

taught us to use

the tundra

...