The Discovery of Slowness [Paperback]

Sten Nadolny (Author), Ralph Freedman (Translator)

Book Description

Publication Date: July 1, 1997

Offers an in-depth fictional portrait of Sir John Franklin, a legendary Arctic explorer, who sets out to discover the Northwest Passage via canoe. Reprint."

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Brutal stuggleagainst Arctic ice, enveloping seas off the coast of Australia, the death ships of Napoleon's navyis etched here upon a canvas of the contemplative and methodically slow thought of John Franklin, whose brain sends no signals to speak or move until it has fully conceptualized a situation. From boyhood John's slowness has been phenomenal, allowing him to hold a rope taut for hours, his arm upright, and gather superhuman strength in the process. The sea, volatile but profoundly changeless, is his precise home; to be the captain of a ship is his goal from the time he is ten. He becomes an expert navigator and learns the function and capacity of every sail, spar and sheet. By age 14 Franklin is a midshipman, at 29 a captain at last. His progress is strewn with naval battles, exploration of unknown coasts and experiences of starvation and mutinyadventures that are conveyed with spellbinding skill. Finally his most compelling dream is realized and he leads a first and then a second expedition to the still and silent Arctic. Fame and riches follow; at age 60 he again sails to the Arctic, where he dies. This remarkable, superbly translated novel derives from the life of the real 19th century explorer John Franklin, who bestowed the name "District of Franklin" to the northern archipelago above Canada.
Copyright 1987 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Library Journal

This fictionalized biography chronicles the life of 19th-century explorer Sir John Franklin (1786-1847), credited with discovering the Northwest Passage. A slow, deliberate, and strange child, Franklin joins the Navy at 14. After many years of seafaring, he becomes governor of Van Diemen's Land, later renamed, by him, Tasmania. Despite his much-needed prison reforms and remarkable humanitarian efforts, Franklin is eventually removed from office and returns to a life of adventure on the sea. Unfortunately, the Franklin that Nadolny gives us is an admirable but oddly colorless character. Constructed on the unoriginal premise that "slow" people can achieve great things, this tale is an endless narrative of stilted, stifling prose. Ronald L. Coombs, SUNY Downstate Medical Ctr. Lib., Brooklyn, N.Y.
Copyright 1987 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 336 pages
• Publisher: Penguin (Non-Classics) (July 1, 1997)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0140265848
• ISBN-13: 978-0140265842
• Product Dimensions: 5.1 x 0.7 x 7.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,799,390 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

39 of 41 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars German classic best-seller in English at last!, July 26, 1997

By A Customer

This review is from: The Discovery of Slowness (Paperback)

The publication (or to be more accurate, re-publication) in English of Sten Nadolny's The Discovery of Slowness is a major literary event, not only for connoisseurs of fine historical fiction, but also for those of us who concern themselves with leadership, communication and systems-thinking issues.

First published in Germany in 1983, this powerful novel of the life of explorer John Franklin has never been out-of-print in that country since. This is certainly due in part to its stature as a cleanly-written, keenly-observed literary impression of a chaotic age not dissimilar to our own, and of a man whose slower rhythm seems out of joint with that age. What has contributed to the book's longevity in the meantime, however, is the cult-status it enjoys among managers and leaders as a portrayal of a type of leadership that all eras cry out for: the ability to perceive the world not merely at the level of isolated events, but at a level of deep structure where the dynamics of the whole system are revealed, and plans can be made based on better data and profounder understanding.

John Franklin is uniquely suited to play this role: "slow" from birth, he experiences the world as an endless cycle of data-gathering, reflection, and action based on the systemic patterns that reveal themselves to his silent contemplation. The fact that that action can not only be more appropriate than what other, "faster" contemporaries would have initiated, but also swifter in execution and more permanent in its effect, only insinuates itself slowly on a society caught up in the frenetic pace of the early 1800's. One simply does not have the time; doing takes precedence over reflection and doing.

It is, however, through his in-born inability to act in any other manner that John Franklin's career is made, first as a seaman, then as a hero at Trafalgar, as the captain of 3 expeditions in search of the Northwest Passage that instinct tells him must exist, and as the Governor of Tasmania. Author Nadolny is, one suspects, as much concerned with his protagonist's inner journey of adaptation to the world (and the world's to him) as with the external details that lead up to the final, fateful voyage to the Arctic regions and the disappearance of the Franklin expedition in 1845. The measure of Nadolny's artistic success is that he achieves our undivided attention and caring at both levels with his breathtakingly simple prose.

Penguin books has done us a great service by re-releasing the elegant Ralph Freedman translation, once fleetingly available from Viking. For people in search of an elegant humanitarian classic, or a portrayal of the much-touted "servant leadership" in action, The Discovery of Slowness may well be the discovery of the summer. And those who agree about its status as a contemporary classic will want to investigate the same author's delicious Hermes-novel, The God of Impertinence, also newly published by Viking

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Read It More Than Once, November 29, 2007

By 

Jill Ireland (Denver, CO) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Discovery of Slowness (Paperback)

My encounter with this book was a bit magical. I arrived at a B&B in Vail and one of Mr. Nadolny's other books was on a table in the common area. I asked about it, and the proprietress said Mr. Nadolny had left that morning and had given her the book. I read it, loved it, and sought out his other works.

My favorite review of this book describes it as "a utopia of character." Truly it is. Yes, it's a nice little biography of an interesting life, but it is so much more. Sir John Franklin realized that each individual has his or her own "speed" in perception and action. Throughout his life, he observed himself and others objectively and developed his own "systems" for the most beneficial application of his own uniquely slow processing of impression and responses. He compensated with rigorous planning, precision, and observation - and by appreciating and effectively leading those who were faster.

Why is this interesting? I believe it is so because in our own times, everything moves way too fast for most of us...and those of us who might be naturally slow in the manner of Franklin suffer most from it. If Franklin were a boy today, he would likely be put on Ritalin, or diagnosed with "Sensory Integration Disorder" or some such thing, possibly placed in a "special" class at school...and his uniqueness would be deemed pathological and buried.

Franklin's qualities, and his persistent but self-accepting stuggle with them, made him the best of leaders and a deeply moral man. Rereading this book, I am led to realize that my own "true inner speed" is perhaps as slow as Franklin's, and that much unhappiness comes from not operating at that speed. This is painful - we can complain about our over-stimulated, over-informed, over-hurried times, but that is futile unless one decides to retreat completely to our own Walden.

Franklin found two things paralyzing: self-pity, and what he called "disapproval," meaning disgust with circumstances he could not change. So he resolved to avoid these and concentrated on his "systems." It worked...perhaps some of us can do the same. And if we are parents, we must make sure we understand and respect our children's "inner speed."

In sum, read this book - and do so more than once to absorb the nuances.

1 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Slowness and Respect, August 3, 2007

By 

B. Yelverton "bonbayel" (Upland, Ca United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Discovery of Slowness (Paperback)

I read "Die Entdeckung der Langsamkeit" when it came out in German in 1983, and loved it. Unfortuntately, it was a borrowed copy, and I kept looking for it among my collection of German books when I often referred it to others.

Now I again had an opportunity to refer to it while reading Patricia Wood's new (and first) novel Lottery, which is also about a very slow person, Perry, who gains respect and friendship after what could have been the devastation of winning the Washington State Lottery. Perry is also a sailor, and Perry, like Franklin, has learned to be an "auditor" and a listmaker, to turn slowness into his strength.