Beasts of the Sea - by Iida Turpeinen (Hardcover)

Book Synopsis

In the spirit of Richard Powers and Daniel Mason, a novel spanning three centuries and tied together by the tale of Steller's sea cow--a long-extinct denizen of the northern oceans--at once intimate and sweeping about the tragic clash between man and nature.

In 1741, thirty-two-year-old naturalist Georg Wilhelm Steller joins Captain Bering's Great Northern Expedition to scout out a sea route from Asia to America. Plagued with hardships, captain and crew never reach their goal, but they do make a unique discovery, a gentle giant that will be named for the young explorer who described it: Steller's sea cow.

In 1859, the governor of the Russian territory of Alaska sends his men to seek the skeleton of the massive marine mammal rumored to have vanished a hundred years before, while his sister curates the settlement's peculiar natural science collection. Two years later, a revered Helsinki professor hires a talented illustrator--a woman!--to make precise drawings of a set of bones sent from afar. The ill-fated beast will help introduce to a skeptical public the concept of human-caused extinction.

Finally, in 1952, the Museum of Zoology assigns its most talented restorer the task of refurbishing the antique skeleton, a testimony to the sea cow's fate that will fire the imaginations of future generations.

Beasts of the Sea is a breathtaking literary achievement and an adventure that crosses continents and centuries. Told through the stories of the men and women touched by the long-ago discovery of a curious and placid creature, it is a tale of grand human ambition, the quest for knowledge, and the urge to resurrect what humankind has, in its ignorance, destroyed.

About the Author

Iida Turpeinen is a literary scholar writing a dissertation on the intersection of the natural sciences and literature. Her short stories exploring the relationship between humans and animals won the J. H. Erkko Young Writers' Competition in 2014. Her 2023 debut novel, Beasts of the Sea, was published in Finland to wide acclaim, won the Helsingin Sanomat Literature Prize for best debut novel, and was a finalist for Finland's biggest literary award, the Finlandia Prize. Translation rights have been sold in twenty-six territories to date. Turpeinen lives in Helsinki, Finland.