A deeply moving, revelatory novel-in-verse about the struggle and persistence of two Indigenous Sámi families across a century of forced migration and colonial trauma
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'Crystalline... reads like poetry and myth at once. There are intricate layers of beauty and meaning here in sparse clusters across a vast new landscape as I've never read before. The music of this book is old, and it is new, and it is old' Tommy Orange, author of 'There, There'
'Incredibly beautiful and magnificent... With Ædnan, Swedish literature has been enriched' Dagens Nyheter
'Not only a linguistic adventure, innovative and rooted in both traditions and renewal, but also a statement that we are bigger and freer than the borders that shut us out from each other... Remarkable and magnificent' Norrtelje Tidning
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In Northern Sámi, the word Ædnan means the land, the ground and the earth. In this majestic verse novel, Linnea Axelsson chronicles the fates of two Indigenous Sámi families over a hundred years as they are expelled from their ancestral home, giving powerful voice to a history under threat of erasure.
In the 1910s, Ristin and Ber-Joná try to care for their infant twins while migrating their reindeer herd to their summer pasture. As a border is imposed between northernmost Sweden and Norway, the family faces tragedy when it is forced to migrate south.
In the 1970s, Lise - part of a new generation of Sámi grappling with questions of identity and inheritance - reflects on her traumatic childhood, when she was placed in a "nomad school" to be stripped of her ancestors' language. Moving into the 2010s, Lise's daughter Sandra seeks to reclaim her heritage, becoming an activist fighting for reparations in a highly publicized land rights trial.
With grand scope and stunning, crystalline language, Ædnan weaves together a chorus of voices from across a century into a profound and moving epic of Sámi life.
