Awards

• Long-listed for Independent Foreign Fiction Prize 2012.
• Long-listed for The Independent Foreign Fiction Prize 2012 (UK)

Overview

An inventive tale of a long-lost language and culture, forgotten but for a single man. He felt a shiver run down his spine when he heard the lateral fricative with labiovelar overlay ring out loud and clear in the chill air…It set forgotten follicles stirring in the soft part of his brain, disturbing liquids that had lain motionless for centuries, arousing sensations not made for men of the modern world. Ivan grew up in a gulag and held his dying father in his arms. Since then he has not uttered a word. He has lived in the wild, kept company only by the wolves and his reindeer-skin drum. He is the last of an ancient Siberian shamanic tribe, the Vostyachs, and the only person left on earth to know their language. But when the innocent wild man Ivan is found in the forests by the lively linguist Olga, his existence proves to be a triumphant discovery for some, a grave inconvenience for others. And the reader is transported into the heart of the wildest imagination.

Full Product Details

9781922079688

Table of Contents

Reviews

'When I reviewed New Finnish Grammar, I edged towards using the word genius to describe Marani. I'm doing so again now.' Guardian 'A roller-coaster ride whisking the reader alternatively through zones of darkness, hilarity, cruelty, tenderness, the near-lubricious...There's something for almost everyone.' PEN 'A riot of comic unpredictability.' The Times Literary Supplement

'When I reviewed New Finnish Grammar, I edged towards using the word genius to describe Marani. I'm doing so again now.' Guardian 'A roller-coaster ride whisking the reader alternatively through zones of darkness, hilarity, cruelty, tenderness, the near-lubricious...There's something for almost everyone.' -- PEN

'When I reviewed New Finnish Grammar, I edged towards using the word genius to describe Marani. I'm doing so again now.' Guardian 'A roller-coaster ride whisking the reader alternatively through zones of darkness, hilarity, cruelty, tenderness, the near-lubricious...There's something for almost everyone.' PEN 'A riot of comic unpredictability.' Times Literary Supplement 'Marani's miraculous novel is profound, moving, elusive and tragic.' Books of the Year, Irish Times on New Finnish Grammar 'We soon forget we are reading an English translation of an Italian novel. Sheer narrative vim is one reason for this...What gives New Finnish Grammar its true interest, however, is its evocation of a place and language foreign to the author yet, to all appearances, intimately familiar.' Times Literary Supplement on New Finnish Grammar 'This is an extraordinary book, as good as Michael Ondaatje's The English Patient and with a similar mystery at its heart.' Spectator's Books of the Year on New Finnish Grammar 'Beautifully written and translated, and beautifully original.' Times on New Finnish Grammar 'It is wise and well crafted. Beautifully written-what a translation!' Craig Sherborne on New Finnish Grammar 'A well-paced dissection of what drives a man to kill to survive, to forget to to preserve a past, then lose it all just when the storm clouds are drifting away. Verdict: Unforgettable search for memory.' Courier Mail on New Finnish Grammar 'New Finnish Grammar is a plangent oddity, a story of ethical tribulation and solitary sorrow.' Age / Sydney Morning Herald on New Finnish Grammar 'This is a stunner...Marani's tale is deeply satisfying...This is language to be savoured, enjoyed and revisited...One of the most astonishingly beautiful books I have read.' Sunday Star Times on New Finnish Grammar 'New Finnish Grammar is truly a marvel...the philosophical and psychological implications of the connection between memory, language and self will leave you deep in thought for some time after turning the final page.' ArtsHub on New Finnish Grammar 'New Finnish Grammar explores the curious theme of language and how it shapes our identities. Fans of Michael Ondaatje's The English Patient will revel in this forgotten gem.' The Big Issue on New Finnish Grammar 'I wish I had the time and energy to learn by heart some of the many passages in this excellent book in which the Finnish language is evoked as an entity more strange and compelling than even the characters who speak it or write letters in it or struggle to comprehend its power and mystery.' Gerald Murnane on New Finnish Grammar

Author Information

Diego Marani was born in Ferrara in 1959. He has worked as a translator and policy officer for the European Commission and has written several other novels, collections of essays and short stories. Marani’s earlier novel, New Finnish Grammar, was shortlisted for the Independent Foreign Fiction Award and the Best Translated Book Award. Judith Landry won the 2012 Oxford-Weidenfeld Translation Prize for her translation of New Finnish Grammar.

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