I finished Frozen Sun by Stan Jones (I read the book in German, as I said on 2006-03-19 Books). And interesting plot with twists spread out evenly. The emotional part was a bit strange – where as I understood Nathan’s fascination with Grace, I did not understand his problem with Lucy. It’s hard to say anything at all without spoilers. ;)
Remember I decided to read this book after reading Juri Rychtëu’s book. His story took place in the years after the second World War and was filled with background about the orginal (and disappearing) culture of the natives, where as Stan Johnes’ story is happening now, somewhere in the late 1990s. Strange to read about Inuit east and west of the Bering straits, a culture I knew practically nothing about until seeing Atanarjuat (2001). I think I’ll order some more books by both authors.
Unfortunately I don’t know the name of the Inuit nation described by Rychtëu in English, in German they are called Tschuktschen.
The strange thing is that the book says that the German translation appeared in 2001 – “Gefrorene Sonne” – which translates to “Frozen Sun”. In my German book, however, it says at the very end that the English original is called “Amazing Grace” and is “unpublished”. Could it be that the German publisher bought the rights to the manuscript and translated it, without there being an American publisher? I’m sure there’s a story in there somewhere... Perhaps the book was “unpublishable” in the USA due to the background of characters involved in the crime?
Well, if you check out his Frozen Sun page, Jones says:
Frozen Sun has been published to considerable success in Germany, but is still in search of a publisher in this country. ¹
(It was published in German, but not in Germany – Zürich is in Switzerland. ;))
I also found Stan Jones' homepage and it has a sample chapter of the book online! Actually, since he has mail address and seems to be a nice guy on his homepage, I’ll send him some mail and let him know I liked the book. Basically in the spirit of FreeSoftware – people like me write software and give it away, and we sure like to see people sending us mail telling us that they like it.
#Books