The Dolphin People
By Torsten Krol
(Harper Perennial, Paperback, 9780061672965, 384pp.)
Publication Date: December 2009
Categories: General
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Shortly after the end of WWII, sixteen-year-old Erich Linden and his family have fled Germany and joined Erich's uncle, Klaus, in Venezuela, where they will begin a new life. But, en route to Klaus's outpost further inland, they encounter a storm and their plane crashes in the middle of the jungle. Stranded deep within Amazonia with no hope of rescue, they are discovered by the Yayomi, a violent and superstitious Stone Age tribe. The Yayomi believe the strangelooking foreigners are freshwater dolphins in human form—and the Lindens believe that as long as they can keep up the bizarre ruse they'll be safe. But the jungle is a dark, mysterious place, and no place for a family of sham dolphin-people who are ultimately left with only two choices: to escape or to die trying.
Torsten Krol is the author of Callisto. Nothing further is known about him.
“Absurd, frightening, riotously funny, and written with relentless, breakneck velocity.... Utterly surprising and utterly irresistible—a spectacular tour de force.”
-Adam Davies, author of The Frog King
“You won’t be able to put down this gruesome and marvelous novel.... Krol’s writing mixes stark, laconic realism with passages of economical beauty.”
-Chicago Sun-Times
“[Krol is] a mesmerizing storyteller with a taste for grotesque, wildly improbable satire.... [A] clever, gory, suspenseful, and outrageous novel.”
-Booklist
“Krol is adept at creating suspense while imbuing the story with an unexpected amount of compassion and tenderness.”
-Publishers Weekly
“[Krol’s] writing is sharp.... [He] expertly turns his adventure story into a pointed commentary on the nature of tribal hatred. An unflinching, nightmarish fable with plenty of smarts behind it.”
-Kirkus Reviews
“What an audacious book. I loved it. A 20th century adventure that could only be told in the 21st. Wild, daring, honest, gruesome.”
-Daniel Wallace, bestselling author of Big Fish
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