The Snowdrift Geographer
Michelet, Jon: Snøfonnenes geografThe metal worker Johannes Mørk, who calls himself the geographer of snowdrifts, has lost his job. On an impulse he commits a desperate act which leads him into an impossible situation. But he doesn’t give up his goal of reshaping a snowdrift in a mountain in Western Norway to make the snowdrift resemble Australia as much as possible.
The financier Gerhard Planck has lost 30 million Euros during a few short days of crisis in September 2008. Can he live with that? He seeks refuge at his seaside hut, and digs out the kayak he used in his youth.
The former brewery worker Hauk meets the school teacher Monika while working at a café/bookshop as part of his vocational rehabilitation. They experience a few good years together but now he is about to lose her to cancer. To give vent to his grief he starts retouching a map of the world.
In 1962 the 18 year old sailor Fred Iver has a brutal meeting with dockside prostitution in the Golden City in Bremen.
In a boat house one winter day in 2008 Fred Iver meets the woman he was engaged to while he was a mate in the late 60s, and whom he hasn’t seen since. Why did things turn sour between him and Anniken?
The mate Fred Iver has disembarked and become a journalist in Tromsø. He returns home from a reportage trip on a whaling ship in the early 70s, and finds a farewell letter from his wife, who has taken their child and moved south.
With presence and warmth Jon Michelet writes about the decisive choices and moments in people’s lives, about the events that throw our whole existence in relief.
Praise for THE SNOWDRIFT GEOGRAPHER:
”Beautiful autumn atmoshpere … Michelet succeeds in creating a very intimate and authentic atmosphere about men in the autumn of their lives. These texts aren’t straight short stories, neither do they feel like aborted novels, the length of these tales suit them very well. The writing is wonderful, and the experiences of a long life and realistic episodes from our own time are combined in an excellent way … a truly good collection.”
(VG)
First published: 2009, Forlaget Oktober
Jon Michelet: Biography and bibliography
