Afterlands - Softcover

Heighton, Steven

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0141024763 ISBN 13: 9780141024769

Publisher: Penguin, 2007

Synopsis

Rare Book

About this title

Review:

"Afterlands is a superb work of the imagination -- a blend of fact and fiction that is handled with grace and mastery. The shifting landscape of the narrative is perfectly paralleled by the shifting Arctic landscape and the wildly changing fate of the hapless souls trapped on the ice floe. This is Heighton at his best."
--Helen Humphreys, bestselling author of The Lost Garden"
"Afterlands is a sprawling adventure story, part epic of Arctic endurance, part Mex-western, a Lost in the Barrens meets The Magnificent Seven kind of book, with an unrequited love affair between a German seaman and an Inuit matron to add passion to an already passionate book. At the heart of Afterlands is an ambiguous hero, the disgraced German sailor Roland Kruger whose true-life bravery has inspired Heighton to create a complex, brooding, rebellious and mysteriously gentle central character. Afterlands is full of unforgettably dramatic moments: the tubercular Inuit girl Punie performing Mendelssohn in a New England concert hall, a gorgeous bear-bull fight in a Mexican plaza, and the long night when the men anchor their remaining whaleboat with their own bodies as the ice-floe sinks and frigid waves dash over them."
--Douglas Glover, Governor General-winning author of Elle: A Novel
Praise for Steven Heighton:
"Steven Heighton is one of the finest writers in this country."
--Barbara Gowdy, author of The Romantic
"One of the best writers of his generation, maybe the best."
--Al Purdy
"He is like a young Ondaatje . . . a superb craftsman at ease in foreign places and distant times."
--"The Globe and Mail
"Heighton is a heavyweight . . . a master of realist narrative. Theresult is a genuine, hard-fought lyrical beauty that transcends fashion."
--"The Vancouver Sun
"A bravura performance, intense and poetic . . . The Shadow Boxer fizzes with life and energy, and has a swaggering, larger-than-life quality."
--"Independent on Sunday (UK)
"Fluid, rhythmical, full of force and grace, his sentences compel you to keep reading."
--Wayne Johnston
"Heighton is one of our most ambitious and prodigiously talented writers. . . . For those who roll their eyes at the prospect of another historical novel from a young CanLit star, rest assured that Heighton's purpose here is not to dazzle with research, but rather to find characters at the boundary points in history, those rare moments when the tectonic plates of different cultures grind against one another and threaten destruction."
-"Quill & Quire

"From the Hardcover edition.

"ÝA¨ dramatic, visually stunning tour-de-force."

Selected as a Best Book of the Year by Globe & Mail, National Post, Vancouver Sun, Ottawa Citizen, and others

"A terrific read...Heighton excels in telling a tale of hardship, madness, love, loyalty, and sacrifice." --Irish Examiner

"Terrific...this novel's scale, its delight in detail, and its psychological insight make it an exceptionally satisfying adventure."

"A rich tale...a story of grand human passions...a subtle portrait of qualified heroism and ambiguous villainy." --Sunday Times (South Africa)

"A masterpiece, packed to the rafters with sumptuous language, sweeping vistas, contained fury, sorrow, and unrequited love." --Daily Express (UK)

"Superb...There's nail-biting adventure, unforgettable character studies, lessons about the resurgance of nationalism in today's post-9/11 world." --Ottawa Citizen

"Compelling, vividly imagined, and written in rich and precise prose...But the real force of the book comes from the currents of history -- of young nations rising and ancient civilizations ebbing -- that run just below the surface."

"[A] dramatic, visually stunning tour-de-force."

Synopsis:

It is the year 1871. Nineteen survivors from a failed expedition drift south on an ice floe off Greenland, battling the elements, one another and themselves ...Yet, it is not the brutal cold or lack of food that worries Second Mate Roland Kruger; it is his commanding officer, Tyson, whose judgement reeks more of the bottle than of good sense. As the castaways struggle over their diminishing resources in increasingly bleak conditions, they resort to their basest instincts and turn on one another. And Kruger finds himself rival for the affections of a woman who cannot love him, while he senses a shadow falling over the rest of his life ...

About this edition

• Publisher: Penguin
• Publication date: 2007
• ISBN 10: 0141024763
• ISBN 13: 9780141024769
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 416