Voyage of the Short Serpent - Softcover

Du Boucheron, Bernard

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1590201515 ISBN 13: 9781590201510

Publisher: The Overlook Press, 2008

Synopsis

Translated from the French by Hester Velmans Years ago, a group left Europe to start a colony in Iceland. But as the years wore on, communication between the colony and the people back home stopped. Had the people of New Thule have gone native-or, worse yet, gone pagan? A cardinal ordered an evangelical mission in order to see what has become of the people, and to revive their faith. But the Short Serpent, the mission's ship, carried its crew toward a horror that no one could conceive. Told in an elegant, compulsive, and increasingly unhinged style, Bernard du Boucheron's The Voyage of the Short Serpent is a masterpiece about mutable human morality in inhuman conditions-a story about truth, obsession, and the myth of utopia.

About this title

About the Author:

Bernard du Boucheron was born in 1928 in Paris. A major figure in French and international industry, du Boucheron won the Grand Prix du Roman de l'AcadÂ?mie Francaise for The Voyage of the Short Serpent.

From Publishers Weekly:

A first-time novelist at 76, du Boucheron caused a literary sensation in France with this tale of a bishop's attempted reclamation of a medieval Scandinavian colony in Iceland. As the novel opens, Einar Sokkason, cardinal of Nidaros, learns that the Christian colony of New Thule has turned pagan. He dispatches Inquisitor Ordinary Bishop Insulomontanus to exorcise the colony with the aid of the stake, the wheel, the head vise, drawing and quartering, the slow hanging, and suspension from the feet or carnal parts. The bishop sets off peaceably in the company of the captain and crew of the Short Serpent, but as the Northern Sea freezes over, frostbite necessitates a few impromptu amputations. This turns out to be a prelude for what will come as the Serpent finally wends its way up the coast of the fjord, and the bishop is greeted by the curious colony of cannibals. Despite a competent translation, the cardinal and bishop's grave dictums are stilted, and the blood and gore titillate less than they bore. (Jan.)
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About this edition

• Publisher: The Overlook Press
• Publication date: 2008
• ISBN 10: 1590201515
• ISBN 13: 9781590201510
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 208