How a novel in a made-up language became a hit

One of the more unlikely publishing successes of 2015 has a Minnesota connection.

"The Wake," by English writer Paul Kingsnorth, has been internationally acclaimed despite having been written in a made-up language. The book is published in the United States by Minneapolis-based Graywolf Press.

Here's Paul Kingsnorth's elevator speech for the book:

"I call this a post-apocalyptic novel set a thousand years in the past," he said from his home in the West of Ireland.

Kingsnorth said "The Wake" is the story of a man who calls himself the Buccmaster of Holland. He's an ill-tempered Anglo-Saxon living in an isolated English village during the Norman Conquest, beginning in 1066.

"And it's really about a man, or a small group of men, living through the collapse of their world, and everything they've known and what they try to do about that," Kingsnorth said.

But when he put pen to paper, Kingsnorth ran into a problem.

"I started writing it in contemporary English," he said, "but it wasn't working. And I realized that the reason it wasn't working was that I wasn't writing the book in the language the people would have spoken."

They would have spoken Old English, but it's a tongue indecipherable to most people today. So Kingsnorth created what he calls a "shadow language." It's understandable to modern readers but gives a flavor of how people spoke in the 11th century and insight into the workings of an Anglo-Saxon mind.

Here's an excerpt from early in the book, when the Buccmaster wakes to find the world has changed.

"when i woc in the mergen all was blaec though the night had gan and all wolde be blaec after and for all time. a great wind had cum in the night and all was blown then and broc."

The text looks intimidating, with its unfamiliar spellings and sparse punctuation. There is a partial glossary that lists a few dozen words. But it usually takes reading just a few pages to catch the rhythm and meaning of the prose, said Graywolf Press editor Ethan Nosowsky.

"It was a bit of a puzzle, and I rather like puzzles," he said. "So, you know, I thought there was a great pleasure in trying to put together what was going on in this book, and I think that's happened for a lot of readers out there now too."

The language in "The Wake" is more than a party trick. Paul Kingsnorth said it's a worldview.

"It really brings home to you how much the words that you use, and the syntax and the vocabulary, creates the world around you," he said.

In his shadow language, Kingsnorth carefully excluded words derived from languages other than Old English. That altered how he wrote.

"It's got fewer words in it. It's got a less complex structure, because the addition of French and Latin later down the line really makes English very flexible as a language," he said. "And Old English is much less flexible. It's much more primitive. It's much more almost tribal, and warlike."

Yet Kingsnorth uses it to tell a complex tale. His central character, the Buccmaster, claims to be a great man, following in the footsteps of heroic ancestors. But he harbors dark secrets, which Kingsnorth gradually reveals as the Buccmaster faces the ugly realities of Norman rule.

"What does it look like when a flawed man has to fight back?" Kingsworth asked. "What happens when a man who isn't necessarily good in a lot of conventional senses has to fight for what is probably a good cause?"

Kingsnorth said that while the Norman Conquest is shrouded in the past, its influence lingers on. It imposed an autocratic system on what was to become Britain, particularly regarding land ownership. That system was later imposed on large parts of the rest of the world, including North America under British colonization.

Kingsnorth said that as he was writing "The Wake" he doubted it would be published. He turned to Unbound, a crowdfunded publisher in the United Kingdom, to put it out. British critics raved about the book. It was longlisted for the Booker Prize. Graywolf Press' Ethan Nosowsky then snapped up "The Wake" for U.S. distribution.

Released just a few months ago in the United States, "The Wake" is already in its fourth printing.

"It's about tripled what our budgeted expectations were for the book," he said.

A film adaptation of "The Wake" by actor Mark Rylance is already in development. And Kingsnorth has just finished the second novel in what he says will be a trilogy that begins with "The Wake."

The characters in the books will be related, he said, but the stories will be centuries apart, and each will be written in its own language. Graywolf's Nosowsky said the press is now in discussions with Kingsnorth about publishing that book, too.