Beasts of the Sea
Translated by David Hackston. Originally published in 2023.
1741. The crew of Vitus Bering's ill-starred Great Northern Expedition are shipwrecked off a remote, uncharted island. With no hope of rescue, they give in to despair. Until they discover the flesh of a huge marine mammal that feeds in herds on the kelp in the bay.
1859. The Russian colony of Alaska is on the brink of collapse. Governor Hampus Furuhjelm takes solace in the quest for a unique artefact: a complete skeleton of what is now known as Steller's Sea Cow, rumoured to have disappeared a hundred years before.
Even extinct, the sea cow will continue to shape lives and destinies, from the woman charged with sketching its likeness from its bones, to the expert egg restorer who will refurbish those same bones a century later.
A tribute to an iconic lost creature, and an adventure through three centuries of scientific exploration, Beasts of the Sea charts the unseen consequences of grand human ambitions and the urge to resurrect what we, in our ignorance, have destroyed.
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Iida Turpeinen
Iida Turpeinen writes at the shoreline where literature meets natural history, where forgotten species, scientific ambition and quiet human longing drift into the same tide. Emerging as one of the most talked-about voices in contemporary Finnish fiction, she has gained wide recognition for turning research, archives and ecological reflection into stories that feel both intimate and expansive.
Born in Finland in 1987 and based in Helsinki, her path to fiction grew alongside an academic life shaped by literary studies and an enduring fascination with science. Long before her first novel, she explored how humans name, study and sometimes misunderstand the living world, questions that later became the beating heart of her storytelling. That curiosity culminated in her acclaimed debut novel Beasts of the Sea (Elolliset), a sweeping, quietly haunting work that traces the rise and extinction of Steller’s sea cow across centuries and continents. The book resonated far beyond Finland, earning major literary prizes, nominations for prestigious international awards, and translations into dozens of languages.