A Dream in Polar Fog

by Yuri Rytkheu

Genres: Cultural Heritage; Literary Fiction

Synopsis

A Dream in Polar Fog is at once a cross-cultural journey, an ethnographic chronicle of the people of Chukotka, and a politically and emotionally charged adventure story. It is the story of John MacLennan, a Canadian sailor who is left behind by his ship, stranded on the northeastern tip of Siberia and the story of the Chukchi community that adopts this wounded stranger and teaches him to live as a true human being. Over time, John comes to know his new companions as a real people who share the best and worst of human traits with his own kind. Tragedy strikes, and wounds are healed with compassion and honesty as tensions rise and fall. Rytkheu’s empathy, humor, and provocative voice guide us across the magnificent landscape of the North and reveal all the complexity and beauty of a vanishing world.

Release date: August 19, 2011

Publisher: Archipelago

Print pages: 337

Sample

On the morning of September 4, 1910, the inhabitants of Enmyn, a settlement spread out on the shore of the Arctic Ocean, heard an unusual clamor. This was not the cracking of shattered ice, nor the rumble of an avalanche, nor the crashing of stones down the rocky precipices of the Enmyn cape.

Just then, Toko was standing in his chottagin, pulling on a white kamleika. He thrust his arms carefully into the wide sleeves, touching his face to the material, inhaling its smell – had a good airing out in the freez- ing wind. Otherwise all he touched – traps, Winchester, snowshoes – everything would be permeated with that smell.

A crashing noise roared in his ears. Toko quickly stuck his head through the neck-hole, and sprang out of the chottagin in a single bound.

Where, only yesterday, there had been the white people’s ship, a cloud was spreading. There were ice splinters under his feet.

People rushed out from all twelve of the yarangas. They stood in silence, looking out toward the ship, and making guesses about the explosion.