From the Mouth of the Whale: A Novel

From the Mouth of the Whale is an Icelandic saga for the modern age. The year is 1635. Iceland is a world darkened by superstition, poverty, and cruelty. Men of science marvel over a unicorn's horn, poor folk worship the Virgin in secret, and both books and men are burned.
Sj³n introduces us to J³nas P¡lmason, a poet and self-taught healer, banished to a barren island for heretical conduct, as he recalls his gift for curing "female maladies," his exorcism of a walking corpse on the remote Snj¡fj¶ll coast, the frenzied massacre of innocent Basque whalers at the hands of local villagers, and the deaths of three of his children. P¡lmason's story echoes across centuries and cultures, an epic tale that makes us see the world anew.