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Strange and Perfect Account from the Permafrost

$18.95

“Niedekker wants to expand our expectations for the novel, and in the process what we expect of ourselves; to make us consider how the history of mankind might overlap with ‘the history of islands or the history of the snowy owl,’ and how our own violent history — of knowledge as a spur to and by-product of conquest — has so often disrupted other histories.”—Robert Rubsam, Washington Post

“The wrinkle is that the narrator delivers his account 400 years later from the vantage of his grave in Novaya Zemlya, which the warming planet is beginning to thaw. He thus exists outside of time and space . . . Tragedy has not slowed in the centuries since the narrator’s death: He has witnessed Stalin’s gulags fill Siberia and seen his island used as a Soviet test site for a hydrogen bomb. The quiet of the grave gives the narrator a serene detachment from all this havoc. The reflections, which drift in elegant patterns like blown snow, frequently muse on the vision of eternity inspired by the arctic void.”—Sam Sacks, Wall Street Journal

“[A] poetic documentation of loss and solitude.”—Literary Hub

“Strange and Perfect Account from the Permafrost is simply beautiful. The author’s a poet, and it shows: every sentence gleams. The story is strange and wonderful, sad and majestic: a real treat.”—John Darnielle, author of Devil House

“Such an odd and fascinating premise gives way to a richly imagined, beautifully translated, and appropriately wry tale.”—The Speculative Shelf

“A scintillating ode to language and history, which at the same time astutely sheds light on our own times. A novel to freeze yourself to.”—Ferdinand Bordewijk Prize jury

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Description

“I am the nameless crew member who died on January 27, 1597.” So reports the Dutch narrator of Strange and Perfect Account from the Permafrost from his icy grave on Novaya Zemlya, an Arctic archipelago separating what are known today as the Barents and Kara Seas in Russia. But when his expedition set out to find a Northeast Passage from Europe to China, the landmasses blocking such a route were unknown. As the expedition fails, the narrator becomes a sentient part of the landscape, privy to centuries of change.

While he meditates on the realities of human hubris that led to his early demise, unpacks his childhood in and around Amsterdam, and comments on the dramatic technological and climatic changes he endures, history and fiction clash with tectonic force. Featuring an eclectic cast of characters, from real-life figures like cartographer Petrus Plancius to Arctic foxes and transcendent shamans, and peppered with references to countless historical events—ranging from the Reformation to Stalin’s labor camps and atomic weapons testing—this boldly imaginative, profoundly beautiful novel argues that the unchanging, flawed characteristics of human behavior are why the natural world has changed in so many ways.

Hailed as the “Zen master of Dutch literature,” Donald Niedekker was awarded the 2021 Brussels Free University’s Luc Bucquoye Prize, given for work that stands out for its unconventional and idiosyncratic nature. In 2023, Waarachtige Beschrijvingen Uit de Permafrost (Strange and Perfect Account from the Permafrost), won the prestigious Bordewijk Prize. The jury praised it as “a scintillating ode to language and history, which at the same time astutely sheds light on our own times. A novel to freeze yourself to.”

Jonathan Reeder, a New York native and longtime Amsterdam resident, has enjoyed a dual career as a literary translator and performing musician. After many years as an orchestral bassoonist, he now translates contemporary Dutch and Flemish fiction and nonfiction, as well as opera libretti and essays on classical music. Recent translations include Crackling Skulls by Roger Van de Velde, The Sound of Utopia by Michel Krielaars, and Mathijs Deen’s Down Old Roads and The Boundless River.

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