Author(s): Mitiarjuk Nappaaluk; Bernard Saladin d'Anglure (Introduction by); Peter Frost (Translator)

Novel | Polar regions

Sanaaq is the intimate story of an Inuit family negotiating the changes brought into their community by the coming of the qallunaat, the white people, in the mid-nineteenth century. Sanaaq, a strong and outspoken young widow, and her daughter, Qumac, hunt seal, repair their kayak, and gather mussels under blue sea ice before the tide comes in. Theirs is a semi-nomadic life on the edge of the ice where marriages are made and unmade, children are born, and violence appears in the form of a fearful husband or a hungry polar bear. Here the spirit world is alive and relations with non-humans are never taken lightly. And under it all, the growing intrusion of the qallunaat and the battle for souls between the Catholic and Anglican missionaries threatens to forever change Sanaaq's way of life.
Due in part to the perseverance of French anthropologist Bernard Saladin d'Anglure, Sanaaq was first published in syllabic Inuttitut in 1987. His French translation appeared in 2002. This English translation now brings this cornerstone of Inuit literature to Anglophone readers and scholars.