Far North
“I bought a copy in a bookshop, and once I started to turn the pages I found it so entrancing that I read it all in one go. A short while after reading it, it struck me that I had to translate this book”
Haruki Murakami
Makepeace is sheriff of a hardscrabble town on the far northern border of a failed state, and also its only resident—the last of a group of settlers who have fled the poisoned cities of the West. The miraculous appearance of a refugee from the vast emptiness of the forest awakens this loner to a longing for life among others, but having taken to the road, Makepeace finds a world unraveling: deserted cities with trees shooting up through the asphalt; stockaded villages enforcing a rough and uncertain justice; mysterious slave camps laboring to harness the little-understood technologies of an expired civilization. With little else for support, Makepeace has to rely on innate resourcefulness, a sense of humor that comes to life at the diciest moments, and a well-concealed core of humanity: a resource that leads to an unexpected salvation.
Far North leads the reader on a quest through an unforgettable arctic landscape. Suffused with an ecstatic awareness of the fragility of the world, and its sometimes unexpected ability to recover from our worst trespasses, Far North is a muscular, visionary novel of retribution and forgiveness.