“After the Breathman” by Kim Leine – Reviews and Recommendations
“After the spirit man” opens with a brother going down into a grave in the churchyard: They have hidden a sack of gold under the half-rotten body of one of his wives.
Leine does not save on the effects, he does not strictly save on anything.
It is hardly a coincidence that the more than 800-page book ends a little over a hundred years after this night at the churchyard, in 1953. Greenland’s colonial status was removed that year.
Into all the intricately woven threads of action, into between all peoples, into between gore and semen and like juice, he weaves factual knowledge about nature, politics and social life, including years.
One can feel that the Norwegian-Danish author has spent many years in Greenland. If Greenlandic readers were impressed by the insights and descriptions, I would like to know.
While the novel opens with death and rottenness, he fades out in 1953 with a birth, where a retired Danish doctor must follow the adult instructions of a Greenlandic midwife.
It boils together
During the first two books, we learn that the missionary came first, then the colonizers appeared. This happened in the 18th century, and changed Greenland forever. In the last volume, the scientific expeditions join the company. They will find out more about the ice and whether “they wanted” the people in the northeast; are they cannibals, as is rumored?
Both the now Christian Greenlanders in the south and the Danes are wondering about that. Over the course of 100 years, the boundary between the “civilized” and the “wanted” is moving further north.
A thread follows the expedition and comes into close contact with a spirit who calls himself Aappaluttoq, well known from volume to where he was also a human being. No one he talks through more and conveys insight about the dead to the living.
The same goes for the priestess Malene Kok in Copenhagen, where she acts as a spiritual medium. The young “mix” Jens goes in and out of this house when he is not snorting cocaine and goes to strictly illegal clubs as a tailgate to the gay writer Herman Bang and the circle around him. While he is strictly in the city to study theology.
The third and thickest thread leads us to the village Sydprøven, where a particularly woman-loving old man turns out to be biologically far to disturbing many children in the small village. Inadvertent incest is unavoidable.
Body fluids, cultural expressions and religious practices blend into ever new alloys throughout the trilogy.
A unique work
And precisely this permanent mixing at all levels is a key move. Here is colonial power and colonized in Greenland, here is the precariat and society in Copenhagen, no doubt about it.
Still, it bubbles best in the trilogy when neither people nor phenomena are what one could first believe, or when the universe collides and something unexpected happens. No categories are locked and static.
It’s a message to the people. But the grip also has another side: the reader often has no idea what is at stake and where we are going, and it seems as if the author enjoys taking us to places and situations one did not have the imagination to dream of.
This combination of storytelling joy, knowledge and intricate braids makes the Greenland trilogy a unique work in Nordic literature.
All reviews and recommendations from NRK can be found at nrk.no/reviews.