Strange and Perfect Account from the Permafrost

“I am the nameless crew member who died on January 27, 1597.” So reports the Dutch narrator of Strange and Perfect Account from the Permafrost from his icy grave on the Arctic archipelago Novaya Zemyla, separating what is known today as the Barents and Kara Seas in Russia. But when this expedition set out to find a “northeast passage” from Europe to China, the landmasses blocking such a route were unknown. While the expedition failed, the narrator becomes a sentient part of the landscape, privy to centuries of change. Meditating on the realities of human hubris that led to his early demise, unpacking his childhood in and around Amsterdam, and commenting on the dramatic technological and climatic changes he endures, history and fiction clash with tectonic force. From real-life figures like cartographer Petrus Plancius to Arctic foxes and transcendent shaman, and peppered with references to countless historical events— ranging from the Reformation to Stalin’s labor camps and atomic weapons testing— this boldly imaginative, profoundly beautiful novel argues that the unchanging characteristics of human behavior are unquestionably why the natural world has changed in so many ways.