From the Mouth of the Whale

“From the Mouth of the Whale is strange and wonderful, an epic made mad, made extraordinary.” —Junot Diaz

From the Mouth of the Whale is an Icelandic saga for the modern age. In the words of Hari Kunzru, “Hallucinatory, lyrical, by turns comic and tragic, this extraordinary novel should make Sjon 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.”
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.
Jonas Palmason, a poet and self-taught healer, has been condemned to exile for heretical conduct, having fallen afoul of the local magistrate. Banished to a barren island, Palmason recalls his gift for curing “female maladies,” his exorcism of a walking corpse on the remote Snjafjoll coast, the frenzied massacre of innocent Basque whalers at the hands of local villagers, and the deaths of three of his children.
Palmason’s story echoes across centuries and cultures, an epic tale that makes us see the world anew.

Sjon is the author of, among other works, The Blue Fox and The Whispering Muse. Born in Reykjavik in 1962, he is an award-winning novelist, poet, and playwright. His novels

have been translated into twenty-five languages. Also a lyricist, he has written songs for Bjork, including for her most recent project, Biophilia, and was nominated for an Oscar for the lyrics he cowrote (with Lars von Trier) for Dancer in the Dark. He lives in Reykjavik.