"Afterlands is a superb work of the imagination -- a blend of fact and fiction that is handled with grace and mastery. The shifting landscape of the narrative is perfectly paralleled by the shifting Arctic landscape and the wildly changing fate of the hapless souls trapped on the ice floe. This is Heighton at his best." --Helen Humphreys, bestselling author of The Lost Garden" "Afterlands is a sprawling adventure story, part epic of Arctic endurance, part Mex-western, a Lost in the Barrens meets The Magnificent Seven kind of book, with an unrequited love affair between a German seaman and an Inuit matron to add passion to an already passionate book. At the heart of Afterlands is an ambiguous hero, the disgraced German sailor Roland Kruger whose true-life bravery has inspired Heighton to create a complex, brooding, rebellious and mysteriously gentle central character. Afterlands is full of unforgettably dramatic moments: the tubercular Inuit girl Punie performing Mendelssohn in a New England concert hall, a gorgeous bear-bull fight in a Mexican plaza, and the long night when the men anchor their remaining whaleboat with their own bodies as the ice-floe sinks and frigid waves dash over them." --Douglas Glover, Governor General-winning author of Elle: A Novel Praise for Steven Heighton: "Steven Heighton is one of the finest writers in this country." --Barbara Gowdy, author of The Romantic "One of the best writers of his generation, maybe the best.
" --Al Purdy "He is like a young Ondaatje . a superb craftsman at ease in foreign places and distant times." --"The Globe and Mail "Heighton is a heavyweight . a master of realist narrative. Theresult is a genuine, hard-fought lyrical beauty that transcends fashion." --"The Vancouver Sun "A bravura performance, intense and poetic . The Shadow Boxer fizzes with life and energy, and has a swaggering, larger-than-life quality." --"Independent on Sunday (UK) "Fluid, rhythmical, full of force and grace, his sentences compel you to keep reading.
" --Wayne Johnston "Heighton is one of our most ambitious and prodigiously talented writers. For those who roll their eyes at the prospect of another historical novel from a young CanLit star, rest assured that Heighton's purpose here is not to dazzle with research, but rather to find characters at the boundary points in history, those rare moments when the tectonic plates of different cultures grind against one another and threaten destruction." -"Quill & Quire "From the Hardcover edition.