review
Prolific Austrian writer Franzobel takes up the real-life story of Arctic explorer Robert Peary and his team, and their race to be the first men to reach the North Pole. But rather than simply focus on a Western tale of conquest and cultural domination, Franzobel also weaves in the historical figure of Matthew Henson, the first Black American to travel into the Arctic Circle, and recounts the fate of Minik, one of six Inughuit whom Peary brought back to New York.
At the outset of this historical novel, Peary and Henson travel to Greenland through vividly rendered natural landscapes. Franzobel imagines dialogue against this backdrop, giving the novel a modern flavour. He also grounds the plot in the human condition, for instance describing Peary’s wife Jo’s lack of interest in hearing about her husband’s exploits when he returns to New York after his first trip. Several more expeditions follow, in which Peary encounters Inughuit and starts to exploit them, for example robbing them of precious meteorites they hold sacred. The Greenlanders’ way of life is fleshed out through details of their hunts, eating habits and childrearing. On one of these trips, including one on which Jo accompanies Peary and even gives birth, he brings back six Inughuit, referring to them derogatorily as ‘huskies’.
In New York, nearly all the Inughuit die from tuberculosis except Minik, a young boy, who is eventually adopted by William Wallace, an employee of the Museum of Natural History. Never quite feeling settled, Minik tries to return to Greenland but his uprootedness proves too high a hurdle to overcome and he makes his way back to New England again, only to die there in the flu epidemic in 1918. In a macabre twist, Wallace turns out to be the man who staged the burial of Minik’s father, Quissuk, only to display his skeleton in the museum where he works.
This gripping portrait of an explorer makes palpable the lengths Peary was prepared to go to in his quest for glory, and his blindness to everything else. But the figures he sweeps along in his wake do not remain shadows at the edge of the narrative: they are given their due in this evocative historical novel. Franzobel’s tale of conquest encompasses wider issues such as colonial exploitation and acculturation, sustaining the suspense right to the end.
Find out more: https://www.hanser-literaturverlage.de/en/buch/franzobel-hundert-woerter-fuer-schnee-9783552075436-t-5516
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