The Smile of the Wolf
- Publisher
- House of Anansi Press Inc
- Initial publish date
- Jan 2019
- Category
- Historical, Action & Adventure, Historical
-
eBook
- ISBN
- 9781487005405
- Publish Date
- Jan 2019
- List Price
- $18.95
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Description
“Smile of the Wolf bares its fangs from the first page. Like a medieval tapestry, the storytelling is rich with imagery. Reader will be lured spellbound into this lyrical and evocative Icelandic saga. It deserves huge success.” — David Gilman, author of The Master of War series
The next great read for fans of the television show Vikings; it’s >killing season in medieval Iceland where dead men rise from their graves, monsters are said to roam the hills, and two men try to avoid paying the ultimate price for murder.
TENTH-CENTURY ICELAND. On a dark mid-winter’s night, two friends kill a man.
Kjaran, a travelling poet who trades songs for food and shelter, and Gunnar, a feared warrior, must make a choice: conceal the deed or confess to the crime and pay the blood price to the family. For the right reasons, they make the wrong choice.
Their fateful decision leads to a brutal feud: one man is outlawed, free to be killed by anyone without consequence; the other remorselessly hunted by the dead man's kin.
Set in a world of ice and snow, Smile of the Wolf is an epic story of exile and revenge, of duels and betrayals, and two friends struggling to survive in a desolate landscape, where honour is the only code of law.
About the author
TIM LEACH is a graduate of the Warwick Writing Programme, where he now teaches as an Assistant Professor. His first novel, The Last King of Lydia, was a finalist for the Dylan Thomas Prize.
Excerpt: The Smile of the Wolf (by (author) Tim Leach)
The feud began in winter, when a dead man rose from the earth.
In the distant lands where men worship the White Christ, I have heard that a ghost is not such a dangerous thing. They are creatures of no substance, who may wail and howl but cannot hurt a man. But in my country, the people are warriors even in death. Our ghosts are not shadow and air, but walking flesh. They wield their weapons with as much strength as they did in life, and more bravely, for they have nothing left to fear. And so, when we heard that Hrapp Osmundsson had crawled from his grave and begun to wander his lands at night, no man in the Salmon River Valley would leave his house after dark without a good blade at his side and a shield on his arm.
In life, Hrapp had been the terror of his neighbours, ever covetous for their lands, their women, their blood. When the winter fever came on him and he knew he was soon to die, he commanded his wife to bury him upright beneath the doorway of his house, so that he could watch over his lands even in death.
Soon enough, the stories spread throughout the dale. Thord the Sly had gone to check on his sheep at night and been set upon by a dead man carrying an axe. Erik Haroldsson, a braver man, had grappled with the creature when it came for him, but was sent running for his life with the heavy tread of the ghost behind him.
No man sought to buy the farm from Hrapp’s widow. Indeed, there was talk amongst the neighbours of selling their own lands and moving on elsewhere, though there were few farm lands so prized in all of Iceland as those in the Salmon River Valley.
For all that was spoken of the ghost, I thought it mere winter talk at first, one of those foolish tales spun to pass the long cold months of near-permanent night, when men do little but huddle round their fires and drink mead, sing songs, tell stories and wait for the sun to return. I am a collector of such tales, yet I tell only the ones I know to be true — or half-true at least. This ghost story held little interest for me.
But then one night I heard Olaf the Peacock speak of it when I visited his farm to trade milk for ale; he was an honourable man, a respected chieftain of the people, and he would never tell a lie. He said that he had seen the bruises on Erik’s arms, and gone in search of the ghost himself. He had found it wandering Hrapp’s fields, bearing Hrapp’s old axe. Olaf cast a spear at it and the ghost had fled from him.
I wish he had not told me that. For it was then that I believed, and I began to tell the story myself.
Editorial Reviews
Leach’s prose is taut, his characters are richly drawn, and the story unfolds with an Icelandic believable-but-inevitable tragedy.
Winnipeg Free Press
A tale of winter with a fiery emotional heart.
The Mind Reels
Through him we understand the pitiless code of honour which drives almost everyone in the story to destruction – we understand, and we care.
Historical Novel Society
A thoughtful, literary take on a world that is more often depicted in a boy’s adventure way. The focus in Leach’s book is not on the fighting, but on the strange, inescapable logic that makes the fighting inevitable.
London Times
A fascinating book on many levels and a thoroughly absorbing read … In Smile of the Wolf, lovers and children are found and lost, loyalties tested, and the harsh reality of long ago Icelandic culture affirmed in a quite brilliant re-imagining of that time and place. Fans of historical fiction and suspense will find it a highly satisfying read.
Reviewing the Evidence
An epic story of exile and revenge set in the snows of Iceland.
Sheffield Telegraph
A poetic, absorbing narrative with many of the same qualities as the medieval Icelandic sagas that it echoes and reimagines.
Sunday Times