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Translated from the French by Blaise Cendrars and Alan
Brown
Dan Yack is an eccentric English millionaire shipowner, a
notorious hell-raiser, and the envy of all St Petersburg.
He is also the alter ego of his creator, Blaise Cendrars.
This strange travel yarn begins with Dan Yack finding out
that he is no longer wanted by his lover, Hedwiga. Rejection
letter in hand, he is completely drunk and sitting in the
middle of the street in a pool of horse’s urine. Eventually
he wanders in to The Stray Dog nightclub to fall asleep
under a table.
Sitting around the table are three hard-up young artists drinking
vodka. One is Arkadie Goischman, a Jewish poet; the second
is Ivan Sabakov, a peasant sculptor; and the third is André
Lamont, a puny French musician. Regaining consciousness, Dan
Yack impulsively invites them to accompany him on a world
voyage via the Antarctic. All three accept the offer and they
set off in a schooner called The Green Star.
Unfortunately, as the voyage progresses, the weather gets
worse and they enter pack-ice. Impatient, Dan Yack orders
the crew to land him and his three companions while they wait
for a clear passage. They have have enough provisions for
a long dark polar winter. But things do not run smoothly.
The musician destroys their watches. The poet drifts off into
serious daydreams. The sculptor starts making statues of Dan
Yack in ice. And Dan Yack himself is worried: about time,
about breaking his monocle and about having no-one to love.
But when the sun finally returns after the polar winter, no-one
could predict the surreal disaster that is about to unfold;
a scenario involving a plum pudding, whales, women and World
War One.
‘A kind of jazz-age super-cocktail, a swirling
cauldron of the outrageous, the orgiastic and the surreal.’ – Guardian
‘Mad, vicious, amusing and beautiful.’ – Time
Out
‘A virtuoso performance.’ – Observer
‘Tintin for grown-ups.’ – Irish Times
BLAISE CENDRARS was
born Fréderic Sauser in 1887
of mixed Swiss and Scottish descent. A legendary adventurer,
his life in Moscow, Peking, New York and Paris inspired his
brilliant, action-packed narratives. The author of more than
twenty books, his works have been translated into eleven languages
(including Braille). A founder of the modern movement in literature,
he inspired poets from John Dos Passos to Patti Smith. He died
in Paris in 1961.
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