Flower Valley by Niviaq Korneliussen, Translated by Martin Aitken
Flower Valley by Niviaq Korneliussen, Translated by Martin Aitken
Pre-order
Literature in Translation Series
Literary Fiction / World Literature: Greenland / Indigenous Literature
Publication Date: April 20, 2027
5.25 x 8 inches
288 pages
Trade Paperback
ISBN 9781778980060
| Trade Paperback $24.95 (Pre-order) | This item will be shipped on: April 20, 2027 |
From award-winning Greenlandic author Niviaq Korneliussen comes a powerful queer coming-of-age story and a fearless exploration of identity, love, mental health, and feeling out of place in a culture where no one speaks of the dead.
Flower Valley in East Greenland is a place of outstanding natural beauty. It’s also the site of a cemetery, a dense cluster of wooden crosses where colourful plastic flowers adorn the graves. Many of those buried there died by suicide, and in Greenland, a place where suicide is so widely prevalent, few people talk about grief.
The novel’s unnamed protagonist, a young, queer Indigenous woman, has just been accepted to a university in Denmark, has a caring family, and a girlfriend she loves. But even as the world seems wide open to her, nothing is quite right. Feeling troubled and insecure, and struggling to cope, she senses everything beginning to close in around her.
Written in unforgettable prose that is both poetic and darkly humorous, Flower Valley progresses from the detached registration of deaths by suicide to its devastating conclusion, where the young woman’s destructive thought patterns are laid painfully bare.
About the Author
NIVIAQ KORNELIUSSEN is the author of the novels HOMO Sapienne (published in the US as Last Night in Nuuk and the UK as Crimson) and Blomsterdalen (Flower Valley), which won the Nordic Council Literature Prize in 2021. Korneliussen also runs the Travelling Writers’ School, working across Greenland to encourage young people to write and share their own stories, as well as giving talks and workshops on suicide prevention. Originally from Nanortalik in South Greenland, Korneliussen now lives in Nuuk.
MARTIN AITKEN holds a PhD in Linguistics and has translated contemporary novels, short stories, and poetry. His work, primarily from Danish and Norwegian, has been shortlisted for the International Dublin Literary Award, the US National Book Awards, the International Booker Prize, and the Ursula K. Le Guin Prize, among others. He received the American-Scandinavian Foundation’s Nadia Christensen Prize in 2012, the PEN America Translation Prize in 2019, and the US National Translation Award in Prose in 2022. His many published translations include novels by Olga Ravn, Karl Ove Knausgaard, Helle Helle, Hanne Ørstavik, Fine Gråbøl, Kim Leine, and Ida Jessen. Aitken hails from the north of England, where he studied community theatre and creative writing before settling in Denmark.
