Strange and Perfect Account from the Permafrost

Overview

“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 the Arctic archipelago Novaya Zemyla, separating what is known today as the Barents and Kara Seas in Russia. But when this expedition set out to find a “northeast passage” from Europe to China, the landmasses blocking such a route were unknown. While the expedition failed, the narrator becomes a sentient part of the landscape, privy to centuries of change. Meditating on the realities of human hubris that led to his early demise, unpacking his childhood in and around Amsterdam, and commenting on the dramatic technological and climatic changes he endures, history and fiction clash with tectonic force. From real-life figures like cartographer Petrus Plancius to Arctic foxes and transcendent shaman, 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 characteristics of human behavior are unquestionably why the natural world has changed in so many ways.

Reviews

"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." —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

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

"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

"This is a book that hums with a quiet sense of magnitude, as Niedekker vividly captures the harsh, tactile details of the everyday against an ever-looming cosmic backdrop. Both all-encompassing and remarkably light on its feet, it’s a book about time, solitude, and connection, full of awe and fascination for our place in a grander surrounding." —Literati Bookstore

"A brief but wide-ranging novel that encompasses many leagues and centuries . . . a high-concept look at deep time that doesn’t take a long time to read."—Leviathan Bookstore

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

Author Biography

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 Cracking Skulls by Roger Van de Velde, The Sound of Utopia by Michel Krielaars, and Mathijs Deen’s Down Old Roads and The Boundless River. 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.”