{"product_id":"the-sealwomans-gift-the-extraordinary-book-club-novel-of-17th-century-iceland","title":"The Sealwoman's Gift: the extraordinary book club novel of 17th century Iceland","description":"\u003cp\u003eIn 1627 Barbary pirates raided the coast of Iceland and abducted some 400 of its people  including 250 from a tiny island off the mainland. Among the captives sold into slavery in Algiers were the island pastor  his wife and their three children. Although the raid itself is well documented  little is known about what happened to the women and children afterwards. It was a time when women everywhere were largely silent.  In this brilliant reimagining  Sally Magnusson gives a voice to sta  the pastors wife. Enslaved in an alien Arab culture sta meets the loss of both her freedom and her children with the one thing she has brought from home: the stories in her head. Steeped in the sagas and folk tales of her northern homeland  she finds herself experiencing not just the separations and agonies of captivity  but the reassessments that come in any age when intelligent eyes are opened to other lives  other cultures and other kinds of loving.  The Sealwomans Gift is about the eternal power of storytelling to help us survive. The novel is full of stories - Icelandic ones told to fend off a slave-owners advances  Arabian ones to help an old man die. And there are others  too: the stories we tell ourselves to protect our minds from what cannot otherwise be borne  the stories we need to make us happy.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"My Store","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":44950116007989,"sku":"ByrdShop_147363895X","price":91.13,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0627\/8139\/0901\/files\/9781473638952.jpg?v=1770096675","url":"https:\/\/atxbooks.com\/products\/the-sealwomans-gift-the-extraordinary-book-club-novel-of-17th-century-iceland","provider":"ATX Books","version":"1.0","type":"link"}