From the Mouth of the Whale

“Strange and wonderful . . . A kind of Robinson Crusoe of the northern climes, an entrancing novel about the wonders and cruelty of a changing world.” —Keith Donohue, The Washington Post

From the Mouth of the Whale is an Icelandic saga for the modern age. The year is 1635. Iceland is a world darkened by superstition, poverty, and cruelty. Men of science marvel over a unicorn's horn, poor folk worship the Virgin in secret, and both books and men are burned.

Sjón introduces us to Jónas Pálmason, a poet and self-taught healer, banished to a barren island for heretical conduct, as he recalls his gift for curing “female maladies,” his exorcism of a walking corpse on the remote Snjáfjöll coast, the frenzied massacre of innocent Basque whalers at the hands of local villagers, and the deaths of three of his children. Pálmason's story echoes across centuries and cultures, an epic tale that makes us see the world anew.

“Hallucinatory, lyrical, by turns comic and tragic, this extraordinary novel should make Sjón an international name. His evocation of seventeenth-century Iceland through the eyes of a man born before his time has stuck in my mind like nothing else I've read in the last year.” -Hari Kunzru, award-winning author of White Tears

“Sjón, winner of the prestigious Nordic Council’s Literature Prize and an Oscar nominee for his musical work with Björk, presents a lyrical novel set in seventeenth-century Iceland . . . Intense and enigmatic, Jónas’ tale unfolds with the power of both myth and memory.” —Booklist