Kalmann and the Sleeping Mountain by Joachim B Schmidt – blog tour

Translated from the German by Jamie Lee Searle

I’m delighted to be leading off the blog tour for this novel by Swiss author Schmidt, who has lived in Iceland since 2007. I hadn’t realised that this novel is a sequel to his first book, just titled Kalmann, which one reviewer has likened to an ‘Icelandic Fargo‘ – so that’s me sold anyway. I will have to read Kalmann, but as the events in this follow-up novel are entirely separate, I didn’t feel I was missing anything crucial that affected this book, although something interesting obviously went on before involving a polar bear and having his gun licence taken away!

It’s obvious from the very beginning of this novel that the titular Kalmann is a real character. It starts off with a declaration, ‘If only my father had never written me that letter.’ Ominous, no? Then two thirds of the way down the first page, we learn he’s been detained by the FBI, in circumstances which later on in the novel will be very recognisable. For now it’ll remain a mystery, but Kalmann does tell the FBI agent interviewing him everything he knows…

I told her everything. And right from the beginning. I told her that until a few weeks ago, I hadn’t even properly known my American father, that he had been stationed on the military base in Keflavik in the 1980s and had donated my mother the seed for my conception, even though he really shouldn’t have, because he already had a wife and two children, and that’s why he was pulled out of Iceland when I came into the world nine months later. That my mother moved with me into Grandfather’s house and I grew up with him there, the man who had taught me everything, for example how to process Greenland shark or to stand with your back to the wind when you’re peeing on the Melrakkaslétta.

He tells her how he’d been visiting his father to get to know him, and while at a rally, he got separated in the crowd from him, and rather than go with the flow had stayed put as he’d been taught, whereupon he was picked up by the FBI. They have nothing to keep him, even though it seems his grandfather was a person of interest to them (curiouser and curiouser!), and so put him on a plane back to Iceland.

We revert back to Akureyri (Iceland’s small but second biggest city) before Kalmann’s trip to the USA, and his last moments with his grandfather who is dying and has Alzheimer’s. Visiting him in the care home, the old man starts spouting what Kalmann thinks may be Lithuanian, before collapsing on him, dying shortly after. Kalmann is discussing things with his best friend Nói, with whom he only converses by videocall, and he’s never seen his face as Nói is always gaming on another screen. As the care home haven’t given the cause of death yet, Nói suggests that Kalmann’s grandfather was murdered, and this starts everything off, especially once they discover that Odinn was speaking Russian, and had been a communist alongside his great aunt Telma who lives near the old US base.

I won’t say any more about the plot, that’s for Kalmann to uncover for you. He is a delight – neurodivergent, matter-of-fact yet slightly gullible, a young man with hidden depths. You could see that if the protagonist, Chris, of The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, grew up in Iceland he could be like Kalmann perhaps? A lot of local people care deeply about Kalmann, and he has a certain notoriety after the polar bear incident, (I must read the first book!). Suffice it to say, when push comes to shove and the past comes back to haunt the present, Kalmann will have the lateral thinking and wherewithal to effect a defence…

Given that Schmidt is Swiss, he has become a true Icelander in his writing, this novel felt so authentically local, and I loved it. The writing is spritely, the pace is perfect, as was the length. As for the FBI connection, the cover’s tagline will give you a clue if you know what it stands for…

Source: Review copy – thank you. Bitter Lemon Publishing, paperback original, 252 pages.

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