Alfred's father was also a scientist, a botanist who fell to his death on an expedition when Alfred was seven, and now his son longs to make up for his father's broken career. To do that, Alfred is trying to keep up with three experienced Norwegians, being eaten alive by clouds of mosquitoes, leaping from rock to rock across rivers, slowly going sleepless between nights of blazing sunshine and his tentmate's snoring. It isn't long until our poor narrator thinks he's listening to conversations between mosquitoes.
Enduring wet socks and a wet sleeping bag, trudging through days of rain, stunned by shocking academic betrayals, repeatedly misunderstanding his traveling mates, Alfred has an appointment with self-knowledge out beyond where Laplanders go, and author Hermans seems to know exactly the route to get him there.
Beyond Sleep is a dry Northern comedy structured on the simple framework of four men on a geology expedition, yet it manages to have a witty deadpan narrative style, a surprisingly clever plot and an atmosphere that conjures up all your worst fears of going on a hike with people who are much better hikers.
Originally written in 1966, later revised, and only last year translated into English, Beyond Sleep is an unusual Kafkaesque comedy that teeters on the edge of tragedy, a young man's education in life's harsher realities that isn't all that funny, except that you can't stop smiling as you read and occasionally you burst out laughing.
The plot is utterly organic and lifelike. You never know where it's going, but each turn and twist feels right. The reader is as much in the dark as the narrator, because being in the dark is the author's vision of how we live our lives. His brave geology student, who would rather be a flautist, is a hero in the dark, trying in vain to get help from the blind director of aerial photography, trying to survive in a land without night where the greatest gift is sleep.--Nick DiMartino