Awake | by Harald Voetmann
Awake | by Harald Voetmann
Translated from the Danish by Johanne Sorgenfri Ottosen
Shortlisted for the 2023 TA First Translation Prize
Shortlisted for the 2023 Oxford-Weidenfeld Prize
Nominated for the Nordic Council Literature Prize
Book of the Month, Republic of Consciousness
Harald Voetmann’s eye-opening English debut, Awake, is the first book of his erudite and grotesque trilogy about humankind’s inhuman will to conquer nature
In a shuttered bedroom in ancient Italy, the sleepless Pliny the Elder lies in bed obsessively dictating new chapters of his Natural History to his slave Diocles. Wheezing, imperious, and prone to nosebleeds, Pliny doesn’t believe in spending his evenings in repose. No – to be awake is to be alive. There’s no time to waste if he is to classify every element of the natural world in a single work. By day, Pliny the Elder carries out his civic duties and gives the occasional disastrous public reading. But despite his astonishing ambition to catalogue everything from precious metals to the moon, Pliny the Elder still takes pleasure in the common rose. After rushing to an erupting Mount Vesuvius, Pliny perishes in the ash, and his nephew, Pliny the Younger, becomes custodian of his life’s work. But where Pliny the Elder saw starlight, Pliny the Younger only sees fireflies.
In masterfully honed prose, Voetmann brings the formidable Pliny the Elder (and his pompous nephew) to life. Awake is a comic delight about one of history’s great minds and the not-so-great human body it was housed in.
Publication 25 August 2022
Description 198 × 129 mm, 135 pages, Softcover Original
ISBN 978-1-915267-09-2
Design Clara Birgersson
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HARALD VOETMANN (b. 1978) was nominated for the Nordic Council Literature Prize and has written novels, short stories, poetry, and a monograph on the Roman poet Sulpicia. He also translates classical Latin literature, notably Petronius and Juvenal. Awake is the first in his series of three historical novels: the second centres on the sixteenth-century Danish astronomer Tycho Brahe, and the final book introduces the eleventh-century German mystic Othlo of St. Emmeram.
JOHANNE SORGENFRI OTTOSEN is a Danish translator. She currently lives in Copenhagen where she also works as an illustrator and literary editor.
Praise for Awake
“Living only means to be awake,” wrote Pliny the Elder, the Roman naturalist who died in the eruption of Vesuvius in AD79, in his Natural History. Danish author Harald Voetmann’s funny, eccentric novel takes snippets from that book (“The soul is nothing but the childish lies of dumb mortals who greedily desire never to die”) and gives us the man behind them in all his human foibles. If your novel doesn’t have much plot, then you’d better have a lot of character, and Awake certainly does… Awake is the first in a trilogy about humanity’s drive to conquer nature. The mind boggles at what is yet to come
– John Self, The Guardian
If you start reading Awake at night, you may end up continuing until morning… Johanne Sorgenfri Ottosen’s translation must capture something of the original Danish, with its colour palette that veers between black and grey, offset by flashes of deep, viscous red (whether blood or wine). Awake is a novel like no other
– Barbara Graziosi, TLS
Shocking, phantasmagoric, paradoxically authentic
– Joshua Calladine-Jones, Hong Kong Review of Books
Voetmann has created a novel of startling perception which leads to a very contemporary consideration. Can the brilliance of someone's writing transcend extreme personal failings? An exceptionally accomplished, reconstruction of an unsettling life
– Declan O’Driscoll, The Irish Times
Reading Voetmann’s books makes me feel so alive. His voice is like no other, his hold on his material masterful. You will never read anything like Awake – a hardcore, pulsating portrait of a first-century Roman weirdo. A wonderful and unpleasant treasure
– Olga Ravn
No one else can describe ancient life with such beauty and humour, while never sparing you from the gross and terrifying pain of being human
– Naja Marie Aidt
With a scholar’s knowledge and a poet’s playfulness, Harald Voetmann brings us into the mind and times of its protagonist, Pliny the Elder. Visceral and lyrical, entertaining and provoking, it evokes a dazzling world on the brink of destruction, resounding with our own conflicted age
– Sjón
Vivid, earthy, by turns hilarious, gross, and tragic, but always powerfully engaging. Reading and rereading this book remains a rare pleasure
– Susanna Nied
This is an interesting book. The writing is beautiful. A fine translation by J.S. Ottosen
– Patti Smith
Awake is original, piercing, and richly exhilarating. Voetmann’s text is a sharp reminder of how powerfully and succinctly well-chosen words can create a world, render experiences, and express thoughts – in short, transport us, to places and in ways we could not have imagined
– Harper’s
A slim novel of ideas, seemingly turning its back on the present, or rather illuminating from within a turn that leads to the very history of European mentality
– Svenska Dagbladet
A flawless and sparkling little monument to human life.
– Information