Description
Zombieland (Zombiet Nunaat) is cold comfort. Violent events occurring in already vulnerable lives are the turning points for Sørine Steenholdt’s powerful short stories, and it can be hard to distinguish between fantasy and reality. Rape, suicide, drug abuse, fires and car theft … few are spared. It is social criticism that gets under your skin.
Originally published in Greenlandic in 2015, Zombieland was nominated for The Nordic Council Literature Prize in 2016. The book is a collection that combines short stories with short sections of poetry. All texts can be seen as allegories that critique Greenlandic society. Some condemn the older generation of Greenlanders who fell into alcohol abuse and neglected their children. Others express the younger generation’s refusal to be represented as subservient to Denmark. While alcoholism has decreased, and sovereignty has been claimed, the memories of the suffering and betrayal of the older generation remain. All of Steenholdt’s stories emphasise the flaws of contemporary Greenland such as poor journalism, untrustworthy leadership, ineffective social institutions and a dysfunctional legal system making Steenholdt’s Greenland a ‘Zombieland’ – a place where no-one is in control.
From Darcy Hurford’s review for #Riveting Reviews, Europen Literature Network (ELN):
“This collection of short stories by Greenlandic author Sørine Steenholdt is compact but powerful. The stories are interspersed with other short texts, while the atmospheric illustrations by Maja-Lisa Kehlet Hansen make you wonder why more fiction for adult readers doesn’t make use of images.
Zombieland was originally published in Greenlandic in 2015. It then appeared in Danish translation by Niviaq Korneliussen and has now been translated into English by Charlotte Barslund. Its subject matter is not easy. Much of it is the nightmarish stuff of social-work case reports all over the world: child abuse, addiction, manslaughter, intergenerational trauma, recurring violence, particularly against women and children. Steenholdt brings a Greenlandic angle: Greenland’s own Inuit culture, the smallness of its society and the issues it lives with. Many parents have experienced the challenges of raising a neurodivergent child, but for a grandparent to embrace it by telling the child he is born to be a shaman, as happens in the story ‘Shaman’ is culture-specific. Likewise, a housing fire is a tragic possibility everywhere, but it is unusual for the narrator to speak of growing up in a house made of peat and stones, as in the story ‘Qinngorput’.
Alcohol abuse is a recurring theme, woven skilfully with the effects of colonialism, particularly in the story ‘Mum Is Just a Word’. This is set at the funeral of the first-person narrator’s mother, a long-term alcoholic. Most attendees seem to be former drinking companions. She notes that not a single man is in Greenlandic national dress: they can’t, she thinks, as they need to wear ‘oversized jackets whose pockets hold so many more bottles’.”
Link to the full review: https://www.eurolitnetwork.com/rivetingreviews-darcy-hurford-reviews-zombieland-by-sorine-steenholdt-translated-by-charlotte-barslund/
