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(More customer reviews)Carsten Jensen's Leviathan 'We, the Drowned' has already won the Danske Banks Litteraturpris, and now, finally in translation, it is bound to take the English speaking world by storm. Despite the massive size of the book (nearly 700 pages) the action is swift and it is immensely readable.
The spine that holds the novel together is the shipping town of Marstal where almost every able man heads off to sea as soon as he is of age. The story starts in 1848 with the larger than life character of Laurids Masden who, we are told ' went up to heaven and came down again, thanks to his boots.' Going off to war with the Germans causes Laurids to return a changed man and he soon abandons his family and his fabled boots to disappear somewhere in the Pacific.
His son Albert grows up in Marstal (and this section provides the reader with a rollicking set of tales as good as those associated with Huck Finn or Tom Sawyer), steps into his father's boots and sets off to look for him. The stories of Albert's Odyssey include, pirates, cannibals, shrunken heads, abusive first mates, murders and near mutinies. There's more than enough to enthrall any reader!
Aging into a comfortably well to do and lonely old man Albert has a young boy named Knud Erik thrust under his wing. Man and boy become deeply attached to one another and the boots inevitably are part of the climax of this tale as well.
Knud Erik now takes the helm of the story and suddenly the seascape and routes become more familiar to the reader. Schooners are replaced by Steamers and when Knud Erik (who has his own set of Twain like childhood tales - also involving the ever famous boots and even a murderer!) finally heads off to war it is a war we, the readers, begin to recognise. Gone are the convivial Germans who saved and fed Laudris at the beginning of the book. His odyssey is littered with depth charges, planes strafing the oceans filled with survivors of ship wrecks and convoys instructed to never stop to pick up survivors. Knud Erik's journey is perhaps the harshest one of all.
These are stories told by men. Marstal may be a town full of women and children when the shipping routes are open but the women are spectators to this story. Even Knud Erik's mother, with her wealth, her hatered of the sea and her desire to destroy the shipping trade, is dwarfed by the huge personalities and fantastic stories the boys and men - all eventual sailors - have to tell.
Harsh and humorous, beautifully written and yet stark, this is a book that brings alive the lives of sea faring men and will surely join the ranks of the modern classics.
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