{"title":"Elin Anna Labba","description":"\u003cp\u003eElin Anna Labba's work offers a profound exploration of identity, memory, and place, weaving together threads of history and nature with evocative storytelling. Her narratives often engage with the landscapes and cultural heritage that shape personal and communal experiences, inviting readers into a deep reflection on belonging.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eBlending elements of \u003cem\u003egeneral fiction\u003c\/em\u003e and \u003cem\u003escience and nature\u003c\/em\u003e, Labba's writing resonates with those drawn to stories that articulate the human connection to environment and ancestry, marked by lyrical prose and thoughtful insight.\u003c\/p\u003e","products":[{"product_id":"the-rocks-will-echo-our-sorrow-by-elin-anna-labba-9781517913304","title":"The Rocks Will Echo Our Sorrow","description":"\u003cdiv class=\"book-description\"\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003eThe deep and personal story\u003c\/b\u003e—told through history, poetry, and images—of the forced displacement of the Smi people from their homeland in northern Norway and Sweden and its reverberations today.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eMore than a hundred years have passed since the Smi were forcibly displaced from their homes in northern Norway and Sweden, a hundred years since Elin Anna Labba's ancestors and relations drove their reindeer over the strait to the mainland for the last time. The place where they lived has remained empty ever since. \u003ci\u003eWe carry our homes in our hearts,\u003c\/i\u003e Labba shares, citing the Smi poet illoha. How do you bear that weight if you were forced to leave?\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eIn a remarkable blend of historical reportage, memoir, and lyrical reimagining, Labba travels to the lost homeland of her ancestors to tell of the forced removal of the Smi in the early twentieth century and to reclaim a place in history, and in today's world, for these Indigenous people of northern Scandinavia.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eWhen Norway became a country independent from Sweden in 1905, the two nations came to an agreement that called for the displacement of the Northern Smi, who spent summers on the Norwegian coast and winters in Sweden. This \"dislocation,\" as the authorities called it, gave rise to a new word in Smi language, \u003ci\u003ebggojohtin,\u003c\/i\u003e forced displacement. The first of the \u003ci\u003esirdolaat,\u003c\/i\u003e or \"the displaced,\" left their homes fully believing they would soon return. Through stories, photographs, letters, and joik lyrics, Labba gathers a chorus of Smi expression that resonates across the years, evoking the nomadic life they were required to abandon and the immense hardship and challenges they endured: children left behind with relatives, reindeer lost when they returned to familiar territory, sorrow and estrangement that linger through generations.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eStarkly poetic and emotionally heart-wrenching, this dark history is told through the voices of the \u003ci\u003esirdolaat,\u003c\/i\u003e echoing the displacements of other Indigenous people around the world as it depicts the singular experience of the Northern Smi. For her extraordinary work, Labba was awarded Sweden's most important national book prize in 2020, the August Prize for Best Nonfiction.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003c\/div\u003e","brand":"NewSouth Books","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":47464618066156,"sku":"9781517913304","price":44.99,"currency_code":"NZD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0705\/7784\/8556\/files\/9781517913304-the-rocks-will-echo-our-sorrow.jpg?v=1775050140"},{"product_id":"the-home-of-the-drowned-by-elin-anna-labba-9781787305243","title":"The Home of the Drowned","description":"\u003cdiv class=\"book-description\"\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe powerful, haunting saga of a family of Sami women fighting for their way of life in a changing world, when their summer settlement is flooded without warning.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eEvery summer, Inga, her mother Ravdna, and her Aunt Ánne travel west to their village on the lake. But the summer Inga is thirteen, they arrive to find their home and possessions have disappeared under water, the land flooded by a dam built to supply hydropower to a society that has continually stolen from them.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eThe Home of the Drowned\u003c\/em\u003e follows these women's fortunes over forty years - from 1942 to 1982 - as the water their people have lived near for centuries is transformed into a menacing force that threatens all they hold dear. Defying the authorities, Ravdna decides to build a house on the lake to replace what was lost, becoming an unlikely activist. Meanwhile, Ánne's health is in decline, and a concerned Inga merely longs to live like everyone else - an impossible wish when the Swedish state is relentlessly drowning her world.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eDrawing on her own family's history of forced relocation and violent colonial dispossession, Elin Anna Labba's debut novel brings Sami history to the fore. \u003cem\u003eThe Home of the Drowned\u003c\/em\u003e reveals connections between land, water and people that hauntingly reverberate with the question - what is it that makes a home?\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003c\/div\u003e","brand":"Penguin Random House NZ","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":47754205167852,"sku":"9781787305243","price":38.0,"currency_code":"NZD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0705\/7784\/8556\/files\/9781787305243-the-home-of-the-drowned.jpg?v=1781659537"}],"url":"https:\/\/bookhero.live\/collections\/elin-anna-labba.oembed","provider":"Book Hero","version":"1.0","type":"link"}