Marcel
Theroux Far North Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Video from the 2009 National
Book Awards Finalist Reading
Photo credit: Sarah
Lee
CITATION
Against the backdrop of poisoned
cities, collapsed governments, and the near obliteration
of the human race, Marcel Theroux conjures in Far
North a haunting, imaginative post-apocalypse tale
of survival, surprises, and relentless suspense. These
storytelling gifts deliver that rarest of achievements:
a spirited narrative that always entertains, deepens
our feeling for the beauty and fragility of our world,
and promises even in the midst of civilization’s
eventual decline the inevitability of hope, healing,
and renewal.
ABOUT THE BOOK
Out on the frontier of a failed
state, Makepeace—sheriff and perhaps last citizen—patrols
a city’s ruins, salvaging books but keeping the
guns in good repair. Into this cold land comes shocking
evidence that life might be flourishing elsewhere: a
refugee emerges from the vast emptiness of forest, whose
existence inspires Makepeace to reconnect with human
society and take to the road, armed with rough humor
and an unlikely ration of optimism.
Far North takes the
reader on a quest through an unforgettable arctic landscape,
from humanity’s origins to its possible end. Haunting,
spare, yet stubbornly hopeful, the novel is suffused
with an ecstatic awareness of the world’s fragility
and beauty, and its ability to recover from our worst
trespasses.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Marcel Theroux is the author
of Far North and three other novels: A
Blow to the Heart, A Stranger in the Earth, and
The Confessions of Mycroft Holmes: A Paper Chase,
which won a Somerset Maugham Award. He lives in London.
My parents never spoke of
the past, and me, I never took much interest in it.
The past had nothing to teach me. The beginning of
the world and my birth seemed like the same event.
For me, the world began with water dripping off wet
sheets in the sunlight. I was the creator, blinking
my eyes to make night and day. And I was Noah, arranging
my chipped hardwood animals in the dust of the arctic
summer. I taught my family language, and I was the
first human to set foot in the wilderness at the bottom
of our vegetable patch.
But now I know different.
I thought I was born into
a young world which was aging before my eyes. But
my family came here when the world was already old.
I was born into the oldest world there was. It was
a world like a beaten horse, limping with old injuries
and set on throwing its rider. And my parents, who
claimed to love plain workmanship and the clean forthright
language of the Bible—behind them was a world
of memory stones, and planes, and cities of glass
that they wanted to unknow.
There’s plenty of things
I’d like to unknow, but you can’t fake
innocence. Not knowing is one thing; pretending not
to know is deception. While me and Charlo and Anna
were playing in the dirt like fools that think they’ve
found Eden, and the other settlers were congratulating
themselves on having the foresight to land up in a
perfect corner of our damaged planet, the world they
left behind was unraveling. What arrogance made us
think we were far enough to be safe?
