Aednan: An Epic
Taking its title from a Northern Sami word for land or earth, this epic novel in verse follows two Sami families. Through voices crossing generations, it portrays memories fractured by borders, assimilation policy, schooling, and development, asking how lost land and culture may be reclaimed.
作品情報
Voices dispossessed of land sing family and collective memory back from the margins of silence.
In the early twentieth century, a reindeer-herding family finds its routes broken by new borders. The story later moves through residential schooling, language loss, hydroelectric development, and the struggle for reparations, as multiple voices reconnect a broken lineage. No Japanese edition was confirmed; an English translation is published by Pushkin Press.
レビュー要約
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The spacious free-verse form makes loss, silence, and rupture part of the structure of the narrative. The work has a mythic resonance while remaining contemporary and accessible, and is valued as an attempt to restore Sami history.
書籍情報
- 出版社
- Pushkin Press
- 発売日
- 2024-01-25
- ページ数
- 432ページ
- 言語
- 英語
- サイズ
- 22.4 x 4 x 14.6 cm
- ISBN-13
- 9781805331315
- ISBN-10
- 1805331310
- 価格
- 4577 JPY
- カテゴリ
- 洋書/Literature & Fiction/Genre Fiction/Historical
In Northern Sámi, the word Ædnan means the land, the ground, the earth. In this majestic verse novel, Linnea Axelsson chronicles the fates of two Indigenous Sámi families, telling of their struggle and persistence over a century of colonial displacement, loss and resistance. It begins with Ristin and Ber-Joná, who are trying to care for their troubled young sons while migrating their reindeer herd in northernmost Scandinavia during the 1910s. The coming of the Swedes brings new borders that lay waste to Sámi customs and migration paths - and mean devastating separation for this family. In the 1970s, Lise grapples with how she was forced to adapt to Swedish society, haunted by her time in a 'nomad school' where she was deprived of her ancestors' language and history. Lise's daughter, Sandra, seeks to reclaim that heritage, becoming an activist struggling for reparations from the Swedish state. 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.
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.
レビュー
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Beatiful!
Beautiful writing and a somewhat new approach to telling an epic story in verse. Very enjoyable, highly recommended if you like poetry in a larger framework.
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Must read
Great book. Innovative and important. Excellent translation.
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Verse novel about the Sami (Lapps)
This is a recent novel by a Swedish writer about the Sami (formerly called the Lapps) who live in the northernmost stretches of Norway, Sweden, Finland, and Russia. The novel begins in the years before World War One when the Sami/Lapps were allowed to roam freely across this Arctic landscape. The story continues to the later imposition of national boundaries in this land, which forced these people to choose a particular country in which to live exclusively. They were also forced to largely give up their formerly nomadic existence. The book ends with the contemporary movement among Sami to re-learn their lost heritage. Unusually, this novel is written in verse. Although the book reads quickly, the verse form requires more thought to understand it. I read it twice through to make fuller sense of it.
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Strange
Didn’t realise it was all done in unreadable prose
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Tragic, Moving, and Hauntingly Beautiful
It has been some time since I was this enthralled by a book. I’ve read it in its entirety in a single afternoon and evening. It felt consumed by the tragic hard lives of the Sámi narrators of this epic poem. It was historical of course, but there was something mythological about this poem almost, something mythical which bleeds nearly dry throughout the decades of the poem, before being born anew with vibrancy and passion. There are several poignant images from this poem that will be woven like reindeer sinew into my thoughts—headlights illuminating a golden eagle rising from a reindeer carcass; a frightened lonely little girl crying in the dark during her first night at a Nomad School to reform and westernize her indigenous identity; woods and trails submerged in the icy waters of a continually-rising reservoir created by a dam; cold light across tundra peppered with migrating reindeer herds. It has been some time since I read a literary work this hauntingly beautiful. A brilliant achievement by Linnea Axelsson.
関連する文学賞
- August Prize 第30回（2018年） ・Winner