This is a micro-review of Harald Voetmann’s 2010 novel Awake, beautifully translated from the Danish (but not till 2021) by Johanne Sorgenfri Ottosen.
Awake is short … but regardless, I almost gave up on it because it was so … disgusting in places! For the strong of stomach, here’s an example:
A fat, ruddy savage stomps around in the sand in the costume of the goddess Diana with an amber wig and a woman’s breast stitched onto the left side of his saffron tunic. He slices open the belly of a pregnant sow with a spear. She’s howling and trying to flee. The contents flop out and trail after her in the sand, and yes, I can make out the young; a tiny bloody squirming clump that will be alive a few more moments.
But I’m glad I persisted, because it might be the most convincing and evocative rendering of an ancient society (in all its alien-ness and sometimes disgusting-ness) that I have ever come across.
This novel (historically based) is told in several “voices”: Pliny the Elder, who among much else, wrote the Naturalis Historia (perhaps the first encylopedia ever written); Pliny the Younger, also an author, and the Elder’s nephew and adopted son; and a slave called Diocles. An additional voice consists of passages from the Naturalis Historia itself.
Both Plinys are associated with the volcanic disaster that buried Pompeii in 79 CE. The Elder perished attempting to rescue a friend and his family. The Younger wrote two letters to the historian Tacitus, describing the eruption.
There’s a long review of Awake in the New York Review of Books, 11/2/23. (This is one example of my finding out about books via the NYRB)
If you end up enjoying Awake, you’ll be pleased to know that it’s the first of a trilogy. The second volume (also recently translated) is called Sublunar. As for the third (presumably still only in Danish) … I haven’t tracked this down as of this writing. Voetmann still seems a bit under the radar, I mean he doesn’t even have an (English) Wikipedia article yet!
lessthanamegabyte 