Gotta love Canongate Books for some of the great books they publish, but gotta love them even more when they send over works in translation that look as delicious as this one does (both in terms of story and cover). This is the soon-to-be released The Hurricane Party from acclaimed Swedish novelist Klas Östergren
Published in Sweden in 2007 as Orkanpartyt, The Hurricane Party mixes Norse myth with a dystopian future to bring a novel with a difference, and one that looks not a little promising. Here’s the blurb:
Hanck Orn’s son is dead. When they come to the door they tell him it was a heart attack, but he knows they are lying.
So he travels to the outermost reaches of the land to find out what really happened. When he lands on the island he is met by a young woman, hair streaked with blood, raving like a lunatic. She is one of the sisters, who tell him the story of how his son died in the great hall of the Clan – the Norse gods – who were holding a party. But the festivities soon got out of hand, the guests began to argue with one another, and the mischievous shapeshifter Loki dealt a deadly blow.
Set in a dystopian future that recalls Orwell and Zamyatin, Klas Ostergren has weaved a dizzying story of magnificent scope and foul play. Moving from the golden halls to the depths of the underworld, it is about one man’s search for justice for his son in a world on the brink. A place where true love is so strong it can bring about the end of time.
If The Hurricane Party isn’t tempting enough with its mythical blurb, Canongate have really put the icing on the bookish cake with some glorious kaleidoscopic cover art that comes courtesy of Ross Holden (Debut Art), who specialises in this patterned form which uses photographic elements as its basis.
Canongate Books | 06 August 2009 (UK) | £12.99 | PAPERBACK | 304 PP | ISBN: 9781847672582
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