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A Dream in Polar Fog
“Rarely has humanity’s relationship to nature been so beautifully and vividly depicted. A Dream in Polar Fog is both elegant and exciting and also serves as a living anthropology of a gone world. It accomplishes everything a novel should.”––Neal Pollack A Dream in Polar Fog is at once a cross-cultural journey, an ethnographic chronicle of the Chukchi people, and a politica...more
Paperback, 337 pages
Published
September 1st 2006
by Archipelago Books
(first published January 1st 1993)
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Tim
rated it
Shelves:
fiction,
novel,
historical,
indigenous,
arctic,
russian,
peoples,
chukchi,
people,
wilderness,
survival,
relationships,
colonisation,
acculturation,
wellington,
public,
library
A Dream in Polar Fog tells the story of how an outsider, Canadian John MacLennan, comes to live with, and gradually become part of, a settlement of indigenous Chukchi people living on the Arctic coast of Siberia, during the years 1910-1917. Yuri Rytkheu, himself Chukchi, uses the outsider MacLennan as our introduction to the life of the Chukchi, and to the encroaching threats that Western ships and Western ways pose to their way of life and their hunting grounds.[return][return]MacLennan is forc...more
In trying to place this wonderful text on one of my Goodreads shelves, I was pleased to discover that it doesn't exactly fit anywhere (I settled for "Russia" on geographical terms, but that's completely arbitrary). That's be cause A Dream in Polar Fog is kind of about everything--at least more so than most books I've read that have been given such a label.
On the surface, it's an engrossing travel tale about John MacLennan, a novice Canadian explorer that finds himself maro...more
On the surface, it's an engrossing travel tale about John MacLennan, a novice Canadian explorer that finds himself maro...more
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The book didn't grab me immediately and some translation mistakes also grated a bit, but as the story developed, and the characters too, I was drawn into the snowy, cold, meat-filled (as a vegetarian!) and precarious life of the Chukchi. I found it a book that really grounds, a reminder of what life is really about. I loved the clash between John and various characters in the book with different opinions/attitudes - and it was often not just a straight clash of different cultures. The story is f...more
Die Heimat der Tschuktschen ist die russische Arktis, und ihr Leben spielt sich im überschaubaren Raum zwischen ihren Zelten am Ufer und dem küstennahen Meer ab, im Rhythmus der Jahreszeiten. Was ziemlich langweilig klingt, hat sich als sehr reizvoll erwiesen, und Jury Rytcheu ist es mit dieser schönen Erzählung gelungen, mir sein Volk näherzubringen. An der Seite des Kanadiers John McLennan, der wegen eines Unfalls anfangs erzwungen bei ihnen lebte, lernte ich die Tschuktschen und ihre einfache...more
I found this very interesting book at the Mary Styles Library. A tale of survival of an American sailor who loses his hands and is abandoned by his ship, he is adopted by a tribe of Russian indigenous people related to the Eskimos. This tale is very detailed and describes a hard life of subsistence living in the arctic. Although a bit dated, it was still a fascinating read.
Jack London meets Margaret Mead in this charming novel, set in the Arctic in 1910. An American white man is left to make a life among the indigenous hunters of the north when he loses his hands in an explosion. Best read in the comfort of one's warm bed.
An early 20th-century Canadian adventurer named John MacLennan finds himself stranded in a small Chukchi community in far northeastern Siberia. This small Arctic fishing and hunting community takes him in, cares for him and eventually embraces him. It's a wonderful and beautiful story of cross-cultural differences and acceptance. But there are certainly the inevitable dramatic confrontations, heart-breaking disasters and ugly cultural clashes.
Who has even heard of the Chukchi? The novel c...more
Who has even heard of the Chukchi? The novel c...more
I enjoyed this story, though it ended unexpectedly-like a couple of chapters short. I appreciated the quality of the translation and would recommend it to people who like stories about the outdoors as well as about relationships.
This was a fascinating story of arctic aborigines and an explorer who ends up living and becoming a part of their lives in early 20th century. It is beautifully written, lyrical, thoughtful and gripping, really making you think of how we live and what is important. It was written many years ago but only recently translated from Russian.
Amazing book, vividly depicting a nearly alien yet elemental landscape. Could not put this book down, plus Archipelago's design of the book is exquisite.
A beautiful book elegantly produced by Archipelago Books. Interesting story told with strong and often poetic language.
Fantastic, if you like meandering (I do) and snow.
Beautiful.
more stars
I should probably quit reading so many polar books. This one is sweet though.
I can't stop thinking about this book. The language is beautiful, the story is compelling, and it really provided some amazing insights about culture, survival, nature, community, the environment, and what makes life worth living.
What a gorgeous book! I've been obsessed with finding good historical fiction that is part anthropology and partly an eye into indigenous cultures around the world. The descriptions are fascinating and wondrous.
You know those books that make you feel a sense of lose when you are done with them? This was one.
I would like to give the book 3.5 stars, to be more precise.
...continuing with my obsession with the Arctic.
The year is 1910. A Canadian trading ship got stuck in ice off the coast of Chukotka, just south of Wrangel Island, next to a Chukchi settlement. An inexperienced sailor, a fresh graduate of the University of Toronto looking for adventure, tries to dynamite the ice away, but a dynamite stick explodes near his hands and mangles them. The captain persuades two local Chukchi hunters to drive him to the Russian doctor in Anadyr on a dogsled, promising a big reward. However, at the first layover they...more
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