A Modern-Day Bestiary
Seven animals hold up a mirror to our species. The lemming, the narwhal, the eel, the Brent goose, the polar bear, the reindeer and the king crab. Against the backdrop of the melting polar ice caps, they lead the reader through a series of installments about adaptation, life and death. Each species sheds its own light on global warming and on its culprit, homo sapiens.
From the 16th century onward, European naval explorers have searched for the Northeast Passage – to China and Japan. In 1596, the Dutch navigator William Barentsz, who lent his name to the Barents Sea, died during an expedition on Nova Zembla. Today however, due to the recklessness of some eight billion earthlings, the Arctic seas are clear of ice in the summer. In August 2014, a Chinese freighter sailed for the first time around Siberia without the help of an icebreaker.
This is a contemporary logbook, loosely based on the original account of Barentsz’s three polar voyages. The focus is not on the sufferings of the crew who had to overwinter in a makeshift hut built from their shipwrecked vessel, but on the (arctic) animals they encountered. Hence the subtitle: a bestiary. Together, these seven inter-meshing stories form the cogs of an urgent climate book. The author’s curiosity prompts him to uncover connections, raise unexpected questions and even run up against the cliffs of personal, existential doubt.
‘4.5 stars: Seven Animals Bite Back brims with facts, insights, enthusiasm and anecdotes. And because of the author’s prose. Wow can he write, that Westerman’ De Telegraaf
‘**** – Very powerful and out of the ordinary. Writer Frank Westermen revives the bestiary (animal book) with narrative drive and dry humor. Gradually the philosophical thread emerges: how do we actually view animals and what does that say about us? Westerman gets to the bottom of it and writes it down beautifully.’ NRC Handelsblad
‘**** – Westerman unflinchingly views fixed ideas from a new angle. His literary investigative journalism goes to the limit and generates an intoxicating series of aha moments. Endlessly infectious. Making big social questions comprehensible through small, personal stories is Westerman’s trademark. In his inspired style, he takes his readers on an unparalleled adventure.’ Humo
‘**** – Westerman interweaves the hardships of the ice sea explorers with the history of seven polar animals. He seems to have access to every anecdote from above the 66th parallel. That he commits them to paper in a measured, wistful style does not make him blind to the facts.’ EW magazine
‘In everything, you feel the virtuosity. With a deceptively simple Mozartian lightness, Westerman strings together diverse narrators, eras and biotopes in harmonious elegance .’ De Standaard
‘Beastly good! An ode to curiosity, a dizzying voyage of discovery far above the Arctic Circle.’
Olaf Koens, journalist
‘Frank Westerman enchants readers with his fascinating leaps of thought, his mixture of science, history, travel and memories. He creates a unique new literary genre around seven special animals from the far north.’ Louise Fresco, writer and academic
‘Frank Westerman is right on target. As one of the masters of literary non-fiction, he knows how to ingeniously interweave many different strands. At a time when those who shout loudest demand attention, Westerman shows himself to be an observer of the pleasantly quiet kind. He is certainly not free from concern about all manner of climatic and geopolitical developments, but relies on the narrative and persuasive power of his stories.’ Trouw
‘Seven Animals Bite Back is written in typical Westerman style: compelling, associative yet direct, juggling anecdotes, reportage, personal memories and improbable historical and sometimes unwelcome facts. Literary and informative.’ Dagblad van het Noorden/Leeuwarder Courant
‘Westerman shows what the animals have to tell us from their perspective. Exactly as a good animal book should.’ Het Parool
‘Written in a way that really only Frank Westerman can. Totally distinctive, he goes to the limit in all the stories he comes across about humans and animals, the connections so associative that at one point it becomes about something else, something bigger.’ Nieuwsweekend
‘Incredibly interesting, wonderful to read.’ Nieuwsweekend
‘That Westerman is a born storyteller, gifted with a supple pen, he has proved with now classic titles like The Grain Republic and El Negro and Me, and with various awards and nominations. In Seven Animals Bite Back, there is also no shortage of style and pictorial power’ de Volkskrant
‘Why did the brent geese stay away once the Afsluitdijk was built? Frank Westerman almost turns it into true crime. He knows how people danced, what was on the menu, how the sea glistened. A modern bestiary, a master storyteller.’ De Groene Amsterdammer
‘Inspiring … Frank Westerman who explains, in the footsteps of explorer Willem Barentsz, what seven magnificent beasts have to tell us.’ De Morgen
Sales
- Querido Fosfor, Netherlands
- Iperborea Italy
- UMco dd Slovenia
Material: pdf and finished copies of Dutch edition (May 2024) 288pp; English sample chapters