Hernan Diaz · 2017 · survival

Hernan Diaz's 2017 debut, a western told backwards. Two Swedish brothers set out for New York and are separated on a wharf in Portsmouth; the younger, Hakan, boards the wrong ship and lands in San Francisco. He spends the rest of his life walking east against the migration, looking for his brother, and becomes a legend called the Hawk without ever meaning to.

1. 1
   Sweden

   Hakan and his older brother Linus leave a poor farm for the emigration port with money for passage to America, and a plan that consists of reaching a city neither of them can pronounce.

2. 2
   Portsmouth

   On the wharf, in a crowd, Hakan loses sight of Linus. He speaks no English, cannot read the boards, and gets onto a ship because it is the one in front of him - and it is not going to New York.

3. 3
   San Francisco

   He lands in California among the gold rush with no language and no money, and works out the only thing that matters: his brother is at the other end of the continent, and everyone here is travelling the wrong way.

4. 4
   The Great Basin

   East across the salt and sage, learning the country from a naturalist who collects fossils and the body from a surgeon's kit - and killing men for the first time, which is where the legend of the Hawk starts.

5. 5
   The plains

   Decades of it: wagon trains, lawmen, zealots and the growing stories about a giant who cannot be killed. Hakan starts avoiding people altogether and digs himself a burrow to live in for years.

6. 6
   The Arctic

   An old man on a schooner frozen into the ice, bathing through a hole he has cut himself, tells the whole story to a crew who half believe it - and then goes on north, still not having found his brother.