Sublunar | by Harald Voetmann
Sublunar | by Harald Voetmann
Translated from the Danish by Johanne Sorgenfri Ottosen
Winner of the Danish Critics’ Prize for Literature
In the 16th century, on the island of Hven, the pioneering Danish astronomer, Tycho Brahe, is undertaking an elaborate study of the night sky
A great mind and a formidable personality, Brahe is also the world’s most illustrious noseless man of his time. Told by Brahe and his assistants – a filthy cast of characters – Sublunar is both novel and almanac. Alongside sexual deviancy, spankings, ruminations on a new nose – flesh, wood, or gold? – Brahe, a choleric and capricious character, and his peculiar helpers take painstaking measure- ments that will revolutionise astronomy, long before the invention of the telescope. Meanwhile, the plague rages in Europe…
The second in Voetmann’s triptych of historical novels, Sublunar is as visceral, absurd, and tragic as its predecessor, Awake, but with a special nocturnal glow and a lunatic-edged gaze trained on the moon and the stars.
Read our interview with Voetmann about the novel: The Genius Who Ruined Eternity
Publication 2 November 2023
Description 198 × 129 mm, 160 pages, Softcover Original
ISBN 978-1-915267-21-4
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 Sublunar
Reading Voetmann’s books makes me feel so alive. His voice is like no other, his hold on his material masterful
– Olga Ravn
A brilliant novel. Visceral and lyrical, entertaining and provoking, Voetmann evokes a dazzling world
– Sjón
Voetmann’s saturnine imagery touches both ends of the optic nerve, intermingling what is seen with what is known… Marvelous
– The Baffler
Arresting and memorable
– Kirkus
Voetmann seems to work from the ground up. Although Awakeand Sublunar might be called novels of ideas, Voetmann's intellectual concerns are not forcefully imposed upon fictional dramas arbitrarily designed to illustrate them, but rather arise from particulars that are irreducible. Each page of the books contains a richness of detail and a depth of attention that has all but vanished from the contemporary novel – or, for that matter, any other mass-produced object. The novels themselves – each scarcely more than a hundred pages – are miniatures that appear to have been less written than chiseled. Images glow in stark relief against the somber backdrops and recur with slight variations, as though guided by a Fibonacci sequence. Amid the guts and gore, there are moments of quiet splendour
– New York Review of Books
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
Praise for Awake
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
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, 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
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