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Book Review
The Whispering Muse by Sjón – review
The muse whispers into the ear of Caeneus, once an argonaut questing for the golden fleece, now second mate on a 1940s Danish merchant vessel schlepping paper pulp to Turkey. Each evening at dinnertime he tells tales of his 3,000-year-old experien... more.
Description
The year is 1949 and Valdimar Haraldsson, an eccentric Icelander with elevated ideas about the influence of fish consumption on Nordic civilisation, has had the singular good fortune to be invited to join a Danish merchant ship on its way to the Black Sea. Among the crew is the mythical hero Caeneus, disguised as the second mate. Every evening after dinner he entrances his fellow travellers with the tale of how he sailed with the fabled vessel the Argo on the Argonauts' legendary quest to retrieve the Golden Fleece. En route the heroes happened upon the island of Lemnos and discovered to their astonishment, and considerable delight, that it was inhabited solely by women. An ode to storytelling, The Whispering Muse evokes a time gone by with wit and verve, from the rogues and oddities among sea-faring types, to the long-lost romance and mystique of ancient mythology.
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