When was the last time you relished sitting down with a 678-page Danish novel? "We, the Drowned" might just be too much book to tote to the beach next summer, but it's powerful reading for a long winter's night. For many nights, in fact.

"Wir Ertrunkenen" schöpft aus der langen Liste berühmter Seefahrer- und Meeresromane, wir erkennen Elemente aus Herman Melvilles "Moby Dick", aus Stevensons und Joseph Conrads Romanen, stilistisch erinnert er zuweilen an Frank Schätzings "Der Schwarm". Der Roman erfüllt jeden Jungentraum von Abenteuern aus echtem Seemannsgarn, er bietet exotische Länder, Kannibalen und Schrumpfköpfe, Schiffskatastrophen und Kriegsgräuel, prügelnde Lehrer aus Zeiten, die keiner mehr kennt, eine verwirrende erste Liebe und ein unverhofftes Wiedersehen und nicht zuletzt die Hassliebe einer verbitterten Mutter - daheim herrscht die Melodramatik, auf See die reinste Action. Da Carsten Jensen ein ungemein gewiefter Autor ist und die Kunst des dramatischen Pathos beherrscht, das dem Leser den Atem verschlägt, ist dieses Buch in all seiner Schönheit und all seinem Kitsch der Inbegriff eines Schmökers, es ist der Schmöker dieses Herbstes.

Seagoing legends of Scandinavia ...The translation is, in the main, finely wrought, preserving both the elegiac lyricism and straightforward, sometimes violent energies of the book. I do wish, however, that American translators (or their publishers) were not so anxious about idioms. To have a young Danish sailor, in 1845, refer to “freezing my butt off” bounces this reader out of a believable book....That said, Jensen’s talent as a storyteller shines through. We, the Drowned is a huge achievement. A first novel, it’s such a large book that I hope the author has more to say. Whatever may follow, I am grateful, engaged and moved by what he has said here.

We, the Drowned makes us appreciate – in vivid detail – how our present lives in commercially successful societies at peace with each other rest even now on horrific exploitation of the inarticulate, often compelled to commit acts whose savage violence we would rather forget.

In this lies the book's principal strength....Every day gives us cause for fear and sorrow but, as on the celebratory one with which the novel concludes, we can defy them by "dancing with the drowned" because "they were us".