The Call of the Cormorant

“Full of memorable images and singing lines of prose.”on Donald S. Murray's previous work 

From the author of the multi award-winning Scottish bestsellerAs the Women Lay Dreaming comes the remarkable “unreliable biography” of serial swindler Karl Einarsson.

As a child of the late nineteenth century in the North Atlantic’s windswept, fog-bound Faroe Islands, Karl Einarsson grows up believing he is superior to his peers, destined for a life of art and adventure. As soon as he is old enough, he sets out for Denmark and begins his own reinvention.

Once untethered from his past, Einarsson’s lies begin to spiral. He begins a life of serial scamming, swindling everyone from fishermen to aristocrats. He has set his sights on Atlantis, but when his schemes find him in 1930s Berlin, for the first time Einarsson is forced to reckon with something bigger than himself. As the Nazis rise to power around him, his indifference becomes unwitting complicity, and even betrayal. 

Based on the true story of Karl Einarsson’s life, this is an outlandish tale of island claustrophobia, of those who leave and those who stay behind, and the many dangers of delusions, deceit, and false identities.