Description
Book Synopsis`She thought that it was precisely when things get uncomfortable or can't be shown that something interesting comes to light. That is the point of no return, the point that must be reached, the point you reach after crossing the border of what has already been said, what has already been seen. It's cold out there.'This hybrid novel-part research notes, part fictionalised diary, and part travelogue-uses the stories of polar exploration to make sense of the protagonist's own concerns as she comes of age as an artist, a daughter, and a sister to an autistic brother. Conceptual and emotionally compelling, it advances fearlessly into the frozen emotional lacunae of difficult family relationships. Deserving winner of multiple awards upon its Catalan and Spanish publication, Brother in Ice is a richly rewarding journey into the unknown.
Trade Review'This is fast, fluid, exciting narrative; random, philosophical, alive, questioning, full of precise set pieces, sensations, regret, emotion, self-doubt, defiance, curiosity and a feel for history, fact and human behaviour . . .Brother in Ice is a living book and one to give your most discerning friends.' Eileen Battersby, Irish Times ---- 'Brother in Ice is actually a culmination of Alicia Kopf's art exhibitions. Prose weaves around line drawings, archival photos and diary entries, creating a style of writing that reassesses the seemingly arid and barren landscapes of frozen climes to instead encompass what Kopf describes as "live beings with voluptuous, nourishing forms".' Alexandra Kreese, The Story of Things podcast ---- `In an epistolic, polar update of Melville's Moby-Dick, Alicia Kopf's genre-defying book rises as clear and cold as an Arctic sea, floating with ideas that, like icebergs, are buoyed up by meaning and memory below their surface. This is an icy dissection of actuality and history, a frozen etymology of meaning. Slipping from Catalunya to the Ultima Thule, echoing a rapidly changing environment, Brother in Ice deals in personal retrieval and magical supposition in the whiteness of a disappearing world. In the process, it achieves a fugitive poetry all of its own.' Philip Hoare, author of Leviathan ---- `In another country this book would have changed the course of history.' Enrique Vila-Matas, author of The Illogic of Kassel ---- `As if by sleight of hand, Kopf displays a wide range of emotions before us. Like the Poles, they are constantly shifting, and inevitably epic.' Agustin Fernandez Mallo, author of Nocilla Dream ---- `A unconventional look at a world that makes [Kopf] feel uncomfortable . . . a text in which the feats of polar explorers give way to a central autobiographical story about the equally harsh and arid trips through family relationships and within oneself.' El Pais ---- `Simultaneously serious and light, incidental and yet trascendental.' El Periodico ---- `A book, part essay and part autobiography, that is also a chronicle of a generation stalled in a world without horizons or certainties . . . An unusual book and the deserving winner of the Premi Documenta literary award.' La Vanguardia ----- `A compelling metaphorical journey that compares the struggles and strains of family to polar expeditions, this cleverly written and illustrated novel doesn't flinch from its exploration of coming of age in the modern world.' Note Bene
