Aritha van Herk je kanadská autorka, ktorá sa vo svojej tvorbe zaoberá otázkami identity a pamäti. Jej literárny štýl je charakteristický bohatým jazykom a hlbokým vhľadom do psychológie postáv. Van Herk skúma, ako sa história a osobné skúsenosti prelínajú a formujú náš pohľad na svet. Jej diela ponúkajú čitateľom podnetné zamyslenie nad zložitosťou ľudskej existencie.
Internationally acclaimed novelist Aritha van Herk takes geography and fiction and creates of them a fiction mapped on the lines of geography, a geography following the course of fiction. A new reading of Tolstoy's tragic heroine Anna Karenina and a sojourn at Ellesmere Island come together, and the North becomes an incomparably beautiful place, a living, unread, feminine landscape.
A restless, wandering woman, whose life and work is to travel, determines that the only way she can appease her terrible homesickness is to occupy the still center of death. Unable to commit suicide, she hires a professional killer and contracts him to kill her, by her choice and on her terms. In an effort to dissuade her from death, her killer elicits from her stories about her travels. In this reversal of Sheherazade, who saves her life through a continuous story, Restlessness becomes a story about how to avoid story, a travel book about how to evade travel, a manual for how to stay put.
Unter Männern: Ein Geologenteam unter der Leitung Mackenzies bricht zu einer den ganzen Sommer dauernden Expedition auf. Das Ziel: die Northwest Territories, Kanada, am Nordufer des Großen Sklavensees, wo man Uran vermutet. Alle Expeditionsteilnehmer sind Ausgestoßene, wilde Romantiker und Wissenschaftler, und sie staunen nicht schlecht, als der junge, schmächtige Koch, den Mackenzie in diesem Jahr angeheuert hat, sich als Frau entpuppt … »Eine dezente Mischung aus Spannung, Erotik, Humor und eindrucksvoller Landschaftsbeschreibung. Ein Buch, das locker unterhält, ohne je trivial zu wirken.« Gudrun Ziegler in den »Luzerner Neuesten Nachrichten«