Winter is savage and cold in Lapland. When a priceless local relic is stolen from Kautokeino, a village in the middle of the isolated snowy tundra, detectives Klemet Nango – a familiar face in the rural community – and Nina Nansen, fresh out of the local police academy, are called to investigate.
There are just a few days until the locals will host a UN conference on indigenous peoples, and Klemet and Nina are under pressure to retrieve the artefact. When a local reindeer herder is found brutally murdered soon afterwards, Klemet and Nina immediately suspect that the two events are linked. But the villagers don’t take too kindly to having their secret histories stirred up and the duo is forced to cross the icy landscapes alone in search of the answers that will lead them to a killer.
Set in an alternately savage and dreamlike Lapland, this compelling, award-winning thriller tells the story of a native people fighting to keep their culture alive in a modern world of ruthless destruction.
There are just a few days until the locals will host a UN conference on indigenous peoples, and Klemet and Nina are under pressure to retrieve the artefact. When a local reindeer herder is found brutally murdered soon afterwards, Klemet and Nina immediately suspect that the two events are linked. But the villagers don’t take too kindly to having their secret histories stirred up and the duo is forced to cross the icy landscapes alone in search of the answers that will lead them to a killer.
Set in an alternately savage and dreamlike Lapland, this compelling, award-winning thriller tells the story of a native people fighting to keep their culture alive in a modern world of ruthless destruction.
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Reviews
A dark, highly original novel.
Original, fascinating, with no concessions to surface '"exoticism".
A powerful Nordic thriller.
A remarkable, triumphant thriller.
Forty Days Without Shadow is more than a splendidly told murder investigation and its consequences. It is a fascinating telling of bloody history, culture and indigenous people struggling against all odds to survive. The winter scenes are frighteningly real, and at times leave you breathless and filled with awe. A book you will not forget. A powerful, ingenious piece of crime noir.
Truly memorable..the account of seeing the first gleam of sunshine after forty days of total darkness will stay with me.
With storylines that shoot along as if over ice, yet with unusual depth, Forty Days Without Shadow has won numerous awards and justly so. The author, the Nordic correspondent of Le Monde, has a deep understanding and love of the furthest stretches of his territory. Highly recommended: just as we might have thought Scandinavian crime was exhausted, a brilliant new voice comes along.