The Man Who Spoke Snakish

Unfortunately people and tribes degenerate. They lose their teeth, forget their language, until finally they're bending meekly on the fields and cutting straw with a scythe.Leemut, a young boy growing up in the forest, is content living with his hunter-gatherer family. But when incomprehensible outsiders arrive aboard ships and settle nearby, with an intriguing new religion, the forest begins to empty - people are moving to the village and breaking their backs tilling fields to make bread. Meanwhile, Leemut and the last forest-dwelling humans refuse to adapt: with bare-bottomed primates and their love of ancient traditions, promiscuous bears, and a single giant louse, they live in shacks, keep wolves, and speak to snakes.Told with moving and satirical prose, The Man Who Spoke Snakish is a fiercely imaginative allegory about a boy, and a nation, standing on the brink of dramatic change.

Report

The Man who Spoke Snakish is a wild comic swoop through the histories of Estonia, magic, human-powered flight and man-bear relations. At once fantastic and emotionally engaged, underneath the narrative high-jinks lurks a deeply serious novel about how Europe became the way it is. Lawrence Norfolk, author of JOHN SATURNALL'S FEAST

Product details

• Authors: Andrus Kivirahk, Andrus Kivirähk, Kivirahk Andrus
• Assisted by: Christopher Moseley (Translation), Moseley Christopher (Translation)
• Publisher: Atlantic Books
• Languages: English
• Product format: Paperback
• Released: 06.07.2017
• EAN: 9781611855272
• ISBN: 978-1-61185-527-2
• Dimensions: 128 mm x 198 mm x 30 mm
• Subjects: Fiction > Narrative literature; FICTION / Coming of Age, FICTION / Cultural Heritage, FICTION / Fairy Tales, Folk Tales, Legends & Mythology, FICTION / Alternative History, Fiction in translation, Narrative theme: Coming of age, Fiction: general and literary, Traditional stories, myths and fairy tales