The Man Who Spoke Snakish
SynopsisPlot
Set in a fantastical version of medieval Estonia, The Man Who Spoke Snakish follows a young boy, Leemet, who lives with his hunter-gatherer family in the forest and is the last speaker of the ancient tongue of snakish, a language that allows its speakers to command all animals. But the forest is gradually emptying as more and more people leave to settle in villages, where they break their backs tilling the land to grow wheat for their “bread” (which Leemet has been told tastes horrible) and where they pray to a god very different from the spirits worshipped in the forest’s sacred grove.
Story
About this book
The Man Who Spoke Snakish is set in a fantastical version of medieval Estonia, where forest still covers much of the land. It follows Leemet, a boy raised by a hunter-gatherer family and the last person able to speak Snakish, an old language whose speakers can command any animal. His family hunts and forages rather than farms, and his world runs on the customs of the forest.
Around Leemet the forest is emptying. People leave for villages, where they clear land, grow wheat, and bake bread, and where they pray to a god unlike the spirits honored in the forest's sacred grove. Leemet has been told that bread tastes terrible. The pull between forest and village shapes the book, as fewer and fewer people remember the older way of living.
Andrus Kivirähk wrote the novel in Estonian, and it became a bestseller at home, known well enough that a board game was built around it. Its central idea, a language dying with its last speaker, links the fantastical forest to a real question about how knowledge disappears. Estonian itself is spoken by roughly a million people.
