An international bestseller- a true story of friendship, adventure, fishing and the extraordinary life within the ocean.
** BBC Radio 4 Book of the Week **
Shark Drunk is, in part, the tale of two men in a very small boat on the trail of a very big fish. It is also a story of obsession, enchantment and adventure. A love song to the sea, in all its mystery, hardship, wonder and life-giving majesty.
In the great depths surrounding the remote Lofoten islands in Norway lives the Greenland shark. Twenty-six feet in length and weighing more than a tonne, it can live for 200 years. Its fluorescent green, parasite-covered eyes are said to hypnotise its prey, and its meat is so riddled with poison that, when consumed, it sends people into a hallucinatory trance.
Armed with little more than their wits and a tiny rubber boat, Morten Str ksnes and his friend Hugo set out in pursuit of this enigmatic creature. Together, they tackle existential questions, experience the best and worst nature can throw at them, and explore the astonishing life teeming at the ocean's depths.
An international bestseller- a true story of friendship, adventure, fishing and the extraordinary life within the ocean.
** BBC Radio 4 Book of the Week **
Shark Drunk is, in part, the tale of two men in a very small boat on the trail of a very big fish. It is also a story of obsession, enchantment and adventure. A love song to the sea, in all its mystery, hardship, wonder and life-giving majesty.
In the great depths surrounding the remote Lofoten islands in Norway lives the Greenland shark. Twenty-six feet in length and weighing more than a tonne, it can live for 200 years. Its fluorescent green, parasite-covered eyes are said to hypnotise its prey, and its meat is so riddled with poison that, when consumed, it sends people into a hallucinatory trance.
Armed with little more than their wits and a tiny rubber boat, Morten Str ksnes and his friend Hugo set out in pursuit of this enigmatic creature. Together, they tackle existential questions, experience the best and worst nature can throw at them, and explore the astonishing life teeming at the ocean's depths.
An international bestseller- a true story of friendship, adventure, fishing and the extraordinary life within the ocean.
Morten Str ksnes is an award-winning Norwegian writer. After studying in Oslo and Cambridge, Str ksnes embarked on a career as a journalist. He has published eight critically acclaimed books of reportage, essays and literary non-fiction. Shark Drunk was awarded five prizes in Norway when it was first published, including the prestigious Brage Prize for non-fiction.
Full of personal anecdotes, facts on marine life and life in
general along coastal Norway, and about the hunt for a big fish ...
So, the book is much like fishing I guess — it’s not about the
catch, it’s about just being there.
*New York Times*
A description of what happens to dead whales gives way to an
impressively thorough history of the Aasjord family’s cos-liver-oil
business… Shark Drunk does contain plenty of interesting stuff.
*Daily Telegraph*
Stroksnes’s sidelong approach to science is beguiling… There are
moments of adventure… but the triumph of this book is it
descriptions… Its beauty, undemanding science and soothing, musing
qualities have made the book a bestseller in Norway and beyond.
*Observer*
A fine book. A hymn of love to the sea. The story of a friendship.
And a sad chronicle of so much that is wrong about our relationship
with the oceans. Deserves to be read widely.
*James Rebanks, author of THE SHEPHERD'S LIFE*
Mr Stroksnes beautifully describes the midnight sun, majestic
fjords and moody stretches of sea, the changing light and the peaks
that rise up out of the water, as well as the Moskstraumen, a
system of whirlpools long feared by sailors… Putting "shark-drunk"
man into perspective as the real threat to the ocean is one of the
many threads Mr Stroksnes has pulled together in a narrative that
takes in history and philosophy, mythology and folklore, from
Norway's fishing past to science and the cosmos. Rather than an
account of two men trying to catch a shark, it is really a homage
to the sea and a call to arms to protect the ecosystem that humans
treat so abysmally yet rely on so much.
*Economist*
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