198(Ht mm) 129(Wdt mm) 432

A Guardian Top 5 Best Translated Fiction Book of the Year
Finalist for the National Book Award for Translated Literature

The award-winning, deeply moving novel-in-verse about the struggle and persistence of two Indigenous Sámi families over a century

As borders are imposed in northernmost Scandinavia, a reindeer-herding family is ripped apart. A century later, a young Sámi woman leads a bold call for reparations. This majestic verse novel chronicles the fates of two Indigenous families over a hundred years, rescuing from oblivion their stories of loss and resistance.

As one generation succeeds another, their voices interweave and form a spellbinding hymn to lands and traditions lost and reclaimed. Written in sparse, glittering verse that flows like a current, Ædnan is a profound and moving epic of Sámi life.

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Winner of the August Prize for Fiction

'Full of sonorous power yet shot through with an undeniable intimacy... Extraordinary' Washington Post
'Lyrical and ambitious' Guardian
'Crystalline... The music of this book is old, and it is new, and it is old' Tommy Orange

Linnea Axelsson is a Sámi-Swedish writer, born in the province of North Bothnia in Sweden. In 2009, she earned a Ph.D in art history from Umeå University. In 2018, she was awarded the August Prize for Ædnan. She lives in Stockholm, Sweden.

Saskia Vogel is a writer and translator from Los Angeles, now living in Berlin. Her debut novel Permission was published in five languages, and she has translated over twenty books from Swedish into English.

'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 Ive never read before. The music of this book is old, and it is new, and it is old' - Tommy Orange, author of 'There, There'

'Vividly captures the plight of the Smi people... Lyrical and ambitious... AEdnan contains echoes of epic poems and Norse sagas but also feels contemporary and accessible... bold and original' - Guardian

'Remarkable... Like the best epics, Aednan is a story not just of a people but also of people, full of sonorous power yet shot through with an undeniable intimacy... Extraordinary' - Washington Post

'Mesmerising. A beautiful, poetic weaving of language, character and place... Evocative and heart-breaking' - Audrey Magee, author of 'The Colony'

'Moves as gracefully as a waterfall... This unique novel beautifully conjures losses and transitions within the flickering shadows of language' - Irish Times