An enthralling, lyrical novel based on the life of the explorer and scientist Anders Sparrman, recounting his voyages with Captain Cook, his bold stance as an early abolitionist and the blossoming of his late-life love affair.
Per Wostberg is the chairman of the Nobel Committee for Literature. He founded the Swedish Section of Amnesty International in 1963, and was deeply involved in the anti-apartheid struggle in South Africa. From 1976 to 1982 he was the editor of Sweden's largest daily newspaper, Dagens Nyheter. He was president of International PEN from 1979 to 1986. He is the author of fifty publications, including novels, poetry, essays and works on African politics and literature.
Wästberg evokes the landscape, and the sights, smells and texture
of daily life, both in Sweden and on Sparrman's travels, with
lyrical precision. It's a breathtaking endeavour - an attempt not
just to capture a life that history reveals only in glimpses, but a
whole universe ... As a historical chronicle, the novel can't be
faulted
*Independent*
Achieves something quietly innovative and original ... [it is] a
work that cleaves closely to a biography but with all the
imaginative freedom and prose style of a work of fiction ... the
book is a subtle, breathtaking achievement. As historical fiction
it effortlessly and magisterially prises open worlds unknown. As
prose it achieves a luminosity and precision that is the true
domain of poetry. Make no mistake, this is a great European
novel
*The Times*
A splendid novel ... a marvel of literary creation, with a sinewy
muscular style and some passages of shimmering lyrical beauty ...
The Journey of Anders Sparrman is a superbly evocative, lovingly
crafted work of literature "unlike any one has read before" as
Nadine Gordimer remarks on the dust-jacket. In the scrupulous
artistic hands of Wästberg, the ghost of the great Anders Sparrman
finally triumphs over his contemporary detractors
*Lancet*
A remarkable blend of quotation, historical record, interpretation
and reinvention. It's also an opportunity to rediscover an
eighteenth-century eyewitness account of colonialism whose outrage
can feel shockingly contemporary
*Prospect*
In Per Wästberg's vividly reimagined life of Anders Sparrman, the
great 18th-century discoverer at long last finds the sensitive
biographer he has deserved for so long
*André Brink*
The novel's deep wisdom questions what is important in life ...
Underpinning the prose is both Sparrman and Wästberg's humanity ...
Wästberg has rescued a beguiling soul from oblivion while subtly
reminding readers that we are what we do
*Telegraph*
In this absorbing fusion of biography and imagination, Per Wästberg
has movingly taken us inside the head of a remarkable man. He
evokes a figure of great compassion and curiosity, whose life was
one of both scientific and moral discovery: of Antarctic icebergs,
of unknown species of plants and animals in Africa, of the
cruelties of slavery, and finally, unexpectedly, in middle age, of
the warmth of love. As a reader, I'm grateful for his discovery of
Anders Sparrman; as a writer, I envy it
*Adam Hochschild*
What can one say about a work of literature unlike any one has read
before? In a long life of reading I have never encountered anything
quite like this sweepingly original symbiosis of scientific
knowledge and curiosity, sensuality, narrative of human ethos and
personality, research into form and significance of nature, written
with thrilling grace. Not only is Per Wästberg a profound thinker
who has followed in our times and world a roving, engaged drive
which has led him to this creation of a novel which is also a
biography (or is it a biography which is also a novel) he has been
enabled to achieve this because he is himself a poet, with the
poet's endowment of capturing in words what would seem out of their
reach. In this account of Anders Sparrman, no figment of
imagination but a Swedish explorer in the eighteenth century, to
turn the pages is not only to follow Anders' perilous journeys with
Captain Cook, and his own in Africa, it is to experience - this is
what it would have been for me to see, with the perception
sharpened as student-disciple of Linnaeus, what no one outside the
Antarctic or interior of ancient Africa had ever seen before. And
that, in its genre, is what this book is: what no one has
discovered the way to write before
*Nadine Gordimer*
It is a tribute to the richness of Wästberg's literary portrait
that you end it with your sense of the ultimate mystery of Sparrman
heightened ... Thanks to Wästberg's art ... Sparrman's vanguard
qualities now receive posthumous salutation
*Financial Times*
This fictional biography by one of the grandees of Swedish letters
charts the life and career of this brave man, seamlessly
interviewing original source material with poetical prose
*Waterstone’s Books Quarterly*
Per Wästberg has written a winner with The Journey of Anders
Sparman ... Wästberg's beautiful prose takes you on an immense
journey capturing the almost mystical experience that early
explorers must have had. It's a brilliantly researched adventure
story and the writing is sublime
*Bookseller*
Scandinavian fiction still scales the heights ... or, from Sweden,
Per Wästberg's sweeping saga of ideas and identities in shipboard
ferment with Captain Cook (The Journey of Anders Sparrman)
*Independent*
A rich composite and the man that emerges is a modest
free-thinking, moral and sympathetic hero
*Sunday Telegraph*
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