Description

In 1848, the young men of Marstal leave their Danish island town to fight in the First Schleswig War, and the sea begins to claim them.

Set in the Danish seafaring town of Marstal from 1848 to the end of the Second World War, We, The Drowned follows three generations shaped by salt water, violence, and absence. Laurids Madsen returns from battle restless and drawn back to the ocean. His son Albert grows up in the shadow of a father who belongs more to the sea than to his family, while Knud Erik Friis comes of age during the world wars, inheriting both pride and loss.

Ships sink, wars erupt, and fortunes collapse as men are lost to shipwreck, combat, and ambition. Women become the authority at home; children grow up without fathers and the identity of the town begins to shift.

Spanning the First Schleswig War and both World War I and World War II, We, The Drowned is nineteenth- and twentieth-century historical fiction full of adventure, longing, and the relentless pull of the sea.

‘Impressive… rich, powerful and rewarding’ Financial Times

‘An epic tale’ Independent

‘A book to sail into, to explore, to get lost in, but it is also a book that brings the reader, dazzled by wonders, home to the heart from which great stories come’ Joseph O’Connor

Publisher Review

"A magnificent addition to the canon of seafaring writing, a brilliant new reworking of the ancient theme...the pages glow with wonderfully imagined pictures... The language is all you could hope for in a sea novel: sinewy and simple, often surprisingly beautiful" -- Vanora Bennett * The Times * "Carsten Jensen is unquestionably one of the most exciting authors writing in Scandinavia today. I always look forward hugely to his books. He is, in my opinion, an utterly unique story-teller" -- Henning Mankell "An epic tale" * Independent * "A novel of immense authority and ambition and beauty, by a master storyteller at the height of his powers. This is a book to sail into, to explore, to get lost in, but it is also a book that brings the reader, dazzled by wonders, home to the heart from which great stories come. Meet Carsten Jensen halfway and you're spellbound" -- Joseph O'Connor "Impressive... one of the more engrossing literary voyages of recent years... rich, powerful and rewarding" * Financial Times *