Miss Smilla’s Feeling for Snow by Peter Høeg (1992)
Miss Smilla is half Danish, half Inuit and a glaciologist. When a Inuit child fell from the roof from the building where she lives, she refuses to believe that it was an accident. Her investigation leads to a dangerous voyage to the Greenlandic ice. What discoveries will she make?
This book is more than just a crime fiction. It is an account on the relation between Copenhagen and Greenland and how Inuits are struggling in the big city. After her mother died, Smilla was sent from her community to live with her estranged Danish father in Copenhagen. It also teaches you a lot about ice and snow. The dead boy’s mother is an alcoholic who often did not feed him. Smilla reminded me a lot of Lisbeth Salander (Stieg Larsson), but she is definitely more kick-ass.
I definitely picked the wrong season for reading this book. It should be read in those dark December and January months when the snow silences everything.
