Laurids is on the scene most briefly-he is a grown man on page one, a physically and psychologically imposing figure whose flight from Denmark and subsequent life as a “native” colors Albert’s entire upbringing. These three men and their stories form the backbone of this vast book. The story of the small shipping town of Marstal, set between the Danish-Prussian wars and World War II, We, the Drowned is a eulogy for a bygone way of life and a timeless account of human suffering and pleasure. It is a generational saga, a swashbuckling sailor’s tale, and the account of a small town coming into modernity-both Melville and Steinbeck might have been pleased to read it. Epic in length and scope, it wanders to exceptional depth and breadth. First published in Danish in 2006, and recently translated into English, We, the Drowned is precisely what the long contemporary novel ought to be. But the good news is that the heavy literary lift has not been entirely forgotten.

In a society that prefers to snack on information rather than dine on knowledge, the long novel is all too often shoved aside for its more digestible counterparts. It seemed for a time that the long novel had fallen out of favor, despite Infinite Jest and A Suitable Boy and William T.

Many great novels, after all, are the perfect length for their own purposes- Jane Eyre, or The Great Gatsby-but don’t we always finish them wanting more? Enormity, a selling point for nearly any other American commodity, is often a detriment to the novel. Bleak House, Les Miserables, and Anna Karenina have shared a similar fate. Does its heft often deter present-day readers? I hope not, but I fear otherwise. Dozens of characters, interwoven plot-lines, and sheer magnitude create a deep and dizzying enterprise. Around 1,400 pages in length (in English, about 560,000 words), Tolstoy’s epic is the epitome of the terrifyingly long novel. WAR AND PEACE: seeing the words can turn a stomach.

We, the Drowned by Carsten Jensen