David Santos Donaldson
Greenland
A Novel
A dazzling, debut novel-within-a-novel in the vein of The Prophets and Memorial, about a young author writing about the secret love affair between E.M. Forster and Mohammed el Adl—in which Mohammed’s story collides with his own, blending fact and fiction.
Kip Starling has locked himself in his Brooklyn basement study with a pistol and twenty-one gallons of Poland Spring to write the story of Mohammed el Adl, the young Egyptian lover of E. M. Forster.
Kip has only three weeks until his publisher’s deadline to immerse himself in the mind of Mohammed who, like Kip, is Black, queer—an Other. The similarities don’t end there. Both of their lives have been deeply affected by their confrontations with Whiteness, homophobia, their upper crust education, and their white romantic partners. As Kip immerses himself in his writing, Mohammed’s story—and then Mohammed himself—begins to speak to him, and his life becomes a Proustian portal into Kip’s own memories and psyche.
Electric and unforgettable, David Santos Donaldson’s tour de force deftly explores the corrosive legacy of white patriarchy, the foibles of interracial relationships, and the redemptive power of literature.
ISBN 10: 0063159554
ISBN 13: 978-0063159556
Imprint: Amistad
On Sale: June 7, 2022
Pages: 336 pages
List Price: $26.99
BISAC1:FICTION: Literary
BISAC2:FICTION: Psychological
BISAC3:FICTION: LGBTQ+ / General
BISAC4:FICTION: African American & Black / General
“Greenland is a smart, exhilarating novel about racism and self-knowledge whose unwieldiness is compensated for by its daring…Donaldson’s own ingenious voice as a writer kept drawing me back; so did his humor.” —Maureen Corrigan, NPR’s “FRESH AIR”
“This is a book with respect for neither the margins of the page nor those that confine us in the real world. Donaldson sustains a plot that ends with ecstasy, action and reconciliation, satisfyingly concluding a novel of ideas that is also about one queer Black man finding his true north.” —Bethanne Patrick, Los Angeles Times
“If you’ve ever been saved by a story or nudged back to life by a narrative, this book is for you! Beautifully written and discerningly plotted. Lovers of Baldwin (and everyone else, honestly) won’t be able to put it down.” —Max Ruthless, Foggy Pine Books, Boone, NC
“Perceptive and personal, this compelling novel eloquently clarifies ongoing issues of race and racism while authentically telling a unique story. Highly Recommended. ” — Library Journal (starred review)
“It’s easily my favorite book of the year, and one of the most innovative and moving novels I’ve ever read.” — Book Riot, Laura Sackton
“As the barriers between past and present get increasingly blurry, David Santos Donaldson’s writing becomes more and more powerful and hypnotic. I couldn’t put this book down, because it’s one of the most engaging and thought-provoking novels I’ve read this year.” —Buzzfeed, David Vogel
“Donaldson explores the themes of race, class, and sexuality in a powerful debut.” — The Root
“Donaldson’s debut novel … is a delicious and delirious work of metafiction.” —Michelle Hart, Electric Literature
“As it weaves in meditations on colonialism, spirituality, and the erotic, Santos Donadlson’s supremely stylish fever dream of a novel may delve most deeply into a specific subset of the queer experience, but the bigger questions it poses about how we come to terms with our own social and cultural identities make it feel surprisingly universal.” –Liam Hess, Vogue
“…eloquent, totally absorbing . . .Greenland is another fine contribution to a growing canon of Black queer fiction.” — John M. Clum, NY Journal of Books
“Greenland” is a refreshing novel from an author who makes unconventional artistic choices to serve his ends. —Dexter Palmer, New York Times Book Review New York Times Book Review
“Irreverent and poignant …”
—Ilana Masad, them
“[A] dazzling debut novel . . . Donaldson keeps us hooked from the start with snappy prose and tense but humane storytelling.”
— Patrick Rapa, The Philadelphia Inquirer
“A metafictional feat and catnip for Anglophiles, this electric debut novel [is] . . sensuous and sly.”— Chicago Review of Books
“Besides being a talented fiction writer, Donaldson is a psychotherapist, and his debut novel is psychologically acute in its portrayal of a queer Black man crumbling under the weight of personal, historical, and racial trauma.” — Booklist
“An intimate, compelling look at race and racism.” — Barbara Hoffert, Library Journal
“History, voice and creativity burst off the page in this debut that examines identity and society through the ages,” — Katherine Ouellette, WBUR’s ARTery
“[An] assured debut … The multiple storylines intrigue and the writing—“the thick air clung to my skin… like a jilted lover”—is crisp . . . The author clearly has talent, and his work’s many fine points suggest he’s one to keep an eye on.” —Publishers Weekly
“Fresh and edgy, David Santos Donaldson’s Greenland is profoundly entertaining and full of emotion, humor, pain, and wisdom. His narrator dances in a hall of mirrors but he doesn’t dance alone—he is joined by his husband, his best female friend Concha, E. M. Forster, Forster’s Black Egyptian boyfriend, and others both earthly and unearthly. Rather like The Golden Notebook for a new age with race and sexuality replacing gender and class, this is the work of a brilliant, inventive, sensuous dreamer.” — Christopher Bram, author of Gods and Monsters and Lives of the Circus Animals.
Greenland is a sly meditation on the will to create, the limits of reality, the pleasures of story telling, and the audacious possibility of salvation by narrative. With a novel that is hyper-literate, meta, and modernist, David Santos Donaldson invites us to remember that thinking is a way adults play and reading is sometimes how we save ourselves. —Alice Randall, author of Black Bottom Saints and The Wind Done Gone
“David Santos Donaldson’s dazzling debut novel, Greenland, can be read on many levels: as a work of fiction that examines the difficulties of creating loving relationships between the colonizer and the colonized—especially when they are of the same gender and of different races—and as a clear-eyed dissection of how empire-building dehumanizes and then subjugates the people it conquers.
As with Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man, Greenland reminds us that far too often Black people are allowed visibility only when their talents are needed or sanctioned by white society. And like a new century’s James Baldwin, David Santos Donaldson writes insightfully about why raging against prejudice and injustice is a necessary act before the atrocities of history can begin to heal.” —Jaime Manrique, author of Cervantes Street and Our Lives Are the Rivers
“Greenland is unique, passionate, and vast in both its reach and its impact. With his debut novel, David Santos Donaldson has written a beautifully personal missive about a writer desperate to find his voice, his possibility, his very reason for living. Greenland’s endearing, seductive, brilliant protagonist, Kip, short for Kipling, has felt like a Nowhere man throughout his life, without a home or identity, reduced to the expectations the world has presented to him based on his race and his desires. He is, in short, all of us, only braver.
Now, Kip is finally ready to find the answers to his questions and he embarks on a journey that leads him, inexplicably but perfectly, to the icy terrain of Greenland, where glaciers fall as quickly as his previously limited ideas about, well, everything. Kip grows within these pages, and so do we. Greenland depicts a panorama that will make you think of Robert Altman and Tony Kushner, who, like Donaldson, take you on a night walk that leaves you shattered—but rest assured, you will get home before dawn, happier, richer, aroused.” —James Grissom, author of Follies of God, Tennessee Williams and The Women of The Fog
“Greenland is a tour de force that delves deep into the complexities of romantic relationships and racial and sexual identity. Donaldson deftly combines classic literary references with modern magical realist elements. I was rooting for the hero all the way.” —HOWARD ROSENMAN, producer, Call Me by Your Name; executive producer, The Celluloid Closet
David Santos Donaldson
Greenland
A Novel
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About
A dazzling, debut novel-within-a-novel in the vein of The Prophets and Memorial, about a young author writing about the secret love affair between E.M. Forster and Mohammed el Adl—in which Mohammed’s story collides with his own, blending fact and fiction.
Kip Starling has locked himself in his Brooklyn basement study with a pistol and twenty-one gallons of Poland Spring to write the story of Mohammed el Adl, the young Egyptian lover of E. M. Forster.
Kip has only three weeks until his publisher’s deadline to immerse himself in the mind of Mohammed who, like Kip, is Black, queer—an Other. The similarities don’t end there. Both of their lives have been deeply affected by their confrontations with Whiteness, homophobia, their upper crust education, and their white romantic partners. As Kip immerses himself in his writing, Mohammed’s story—and then Mohammed himself—begins to speak to him, and his life becomes a Proustian portal into Kip’s own memories and psyche.
Electric and unforgettable, David Santos Donaldson’s tour de force deftly explores the corrosive legacy of white patriarchy, the foibles of interracial relationships, and the redemptive power of literature.
Product Details
SBN: 9780063159556
ISBN 10: 0063159554
Imprint: Amistad
On Sale: June 7, 2022
Pages: 304 pages
List Price: $26.99
BISAC1:FICTION: Literary
BISAC2:FICTION: Psychological
BISAC3:FICTION: LGBTQ+ / General
BISAC4:FICTION: African American & Black / General
Reviews
“Greenland is a smart, exhilarating novel about racism and self-knowledge whose unwieldiness is compensated for by its daring…Donaldson’s own ingenious voice as a writer kept drawing me back; so did his humor.”
—Maureen Corrigan, NPR’s “FRESH AIR”
“This is a book with respect for neither the margins of the page nor those that confine us in the real world. Donaldson sustains a plot that ends with ecstasy, action and reconciliation, satisfyingly concluding a novel of ideas that is also about one queer Black man finding his true north.”
— Bethanne Patrick, Los Angeles Times
“If you’ve ever been saved by a story or nudged back to life by a narrative, this book is for you! Beautifully written and discerningly plotted. Lovers of Baldwin (and everyone else, honestly) won’t be able to put it down.”
— Max Ruthless, Foggy Pine Books, Boone, NC
“Perceptive and personal, this compelling novel eloquently clarifies ongoing issues of race and racism while authentically telling a unique story. Highly Recommended.”
— Library Journal (starred review)
“As the barriers between past and present get increasingly blurry, David Santos Donaldson’s writing becomes more and more powerful and hypnotic. I couldn’t put this book down, because it’s one of the most engaging and thought-provoking novels I’ve read this year.”
—Buzzfeed, David Vogel
“Donaldson explores the themes of race, class and sexuality in a powerful debut.”
— The Root
“Donaldson’s debut novel … is a delicious and delirious work of metafiction.”
—Michelle Hart, Electric Literature
“As it weaves in meditations on colonialism, spirituality, and the erotic, Santos Donadlson’s supremely stylish fever dream of a novel may delve most deeply into a specific subset of the queer experience, but the bigger questions it poses about how we come to terms with our own social and cultural identities make it feel surprisingly universal.”
—Liam Hess, Vogue
“Greenland” is a refreshing novel from an author who makes unconventional artistic choices to serve his ends.
—Dexter Palmer, New York Times Book Review New York Times Book Review
“…eloquent, totally absorbing . . .Greenland is another fine contribution to a growing canon of Black queer fiction.”
—John M. Clum, NY Journal of Books
“Irreverent and poignant …”
—Ilana Masad, them
“[A] dazzling debut novel . . . Donaldson keeps us hooked from the start with snappy prose and tense but humane storytelling.”
—Patrick Rapa, The Philadelphia Inquirer
“A metafictional feat and catnip for Anglophiles, this electric debut novel [is] . . sensuous and sly.”
—Chicago Review of Books
“Besides being a talented fiction writer, Donaldson is a psychotherapist, and his debut novel is psychologically acute in its portrayal of a queer Black man crumbling under the weight of personal, historical, and racial trauma.”
— Booklist
“An intimate, compelling look at race and racism”
—Barbara Hoffert, Library Journal
“History, voice and creativity burst off the page in this debut that examines identity and society through the ages,”
—Katherine Ouellette, WBUR’s ARTery
“[An] assured debut … The multiple story lines intrigue, and the writing—“the thick air clung to my skin… like a jilted lover”—is crisp . . . The author clearly has talent, and his work’s many fine points suggest he’s one to keep an eye on.”
—Publishers Weekly
“A sly meditation on the audacious possibility of salvation by narrative.”
— Alice Randall, author of Black Bottom Saints and The Wind Done Gone.
“David Santos Donaldson’s debut novel Greenland is profoundly entertaining and full of emotion, humor, pain, and wisdom. This is the work of a brilliant, inventive, sensuous dreamer.”
— Christopher Bram, author of Gods and Monsters and Lives of the Circus Animals
“Dazzling…Greenland examines the difficulties of creating loving relationships between the colonizer and the colonized, especially when they are of the same gender and of different races. Like a new century’s James Baldwin, David Santos Donaldson writes insightfully about why raging against prejudice and injustice is a necessary act before the atrocities of history can begin to heal.”
— Jaime Manrique, author of Like This Afternoon Forever, and Cervantes Street
“Greenland depicts a panorama that will make you think of both Robert Altman and Tony Kushner—you will be happier, richer, aroused.”
—James Grissom, author of Follies of God
“Greenland is a tour de force that delves deep into the complexities of romantic relationships and racial and sexual identity. Donaldson deftly combines classic literary references with modern magical realist elements. I was rooting for the hero all the way.”
—HOWARD ROSENMAN, producer, Call Me by Your Name; executive producer, The Celluloid Closet
Praise for Greenland
Review: A Black gay novelist explodes the margins, with help from E.M. Forster, in ‘Greenland’ –
“Greenland is a smart, exhilarating novel about racism and self-knowledge whose unwieldiness is compensated for by its daring…Donaldson’s own ingenious voice as a writer kept drawing me back; so did his humor.”
—Maureen Corrigan, NPR’s “FRESH AIR”
INDIES INTRODUCE PICKS GREENLAND IN TOP 10 DEBUTS SUMMER/FALL 2022
“If you’ve ever been saved by a story or nudged back to life by a narrative, this book is for you! Beautifully written and discerningly plotted. Lovers of Baldwin (and everyone else, honestly) won’t be able to put it down.”
—Max Ruthless, Foggy Pine Books, Boone, NC
“Perceptive and personal, this compelling novel eloquently clarifies ongoing issues of race and racism while authentically telling a unique story. ”
— Library Journal (starred review)
“Donaldson’s debut novel … is a delicious and delirious work of metafiction.”
—Michelle Hart, Electric Literature
“Besides being a talented fiction writer, Donaldson is a psychotherapist, and his debut novel is psychologically acute in its portrayal of a queer Black man crumbling under the weight of personal, historical, and racial trauma.”
— Booklist
“An intimate, compelling look at race and racism”
—Barbara Hoffert, Library Journal
“History, voice and creativity burst off the page in this debut that examines identity and society through the ages,”
—Katherine Ouellette, WBUR’s ARTery
“[An] assured debut … The multiple story lines intrigue, and the writing—“the thick air clung to my skin… like a jilted lover”—is crisp . . . The author clearly has talent, and his work’s many fine points suggest he’s one to keep an eye on.”
—Publishers Weekly
“A sly meditation on the audacious possibility of salvation by narrative.”
— Alice Randall, author of Black Bottom Saints and The Wind Done Gone.
“David Santos Donaldson’s debut novel Greenland is profoundly entertaining and full of emotion, humor, pain, and wisdom. This is the work of a brilliant, inventive, sensuous dreamer.”
— Christopher Bram, author of Gods and Monsters and Lives of the Circus Animals
“Dazzling…Greenland examines the difficulties of creating loving relationships between the colonizer and the colonized, especially when they are of the same gender and of different races. Like a new century’s James Baldwin, David Santos Donaldson writes insightfully about why raging against prejudice and injustice is a necessary act before the atrocities of history can begin to heal.”
— Jaime Manrique, author of Like This Afternoon Forever, and Cervantes Street
“Greenland depicts a panorama that will make you think of both Robert Altman and Tony Kushner—you will be happier, richer, aroused.”
—James Grissom, author of Follies of God
—HOWARD ROSENMAN, producer, Call Me by Your Name; executive producer,The Celluloid Closet