What Good Does It Do for a Person to Wake Up One Morning This Side of the New Millennium (Paperback) (ISBN-13: 9781646053728)

Nominated for the 2024 Nordic Council Literature Prize, Kim Simonsen introduces a new perspective to Faroese literature rooted in the materiality of all natural organisms.

The rhetorical title of the collection posits the crisis that is underway. Simonsen asks: as a species among species, all comprised of the matter of the universe, how has our compulsion to hierarchically categorize everything estranged us from ourselves, each other, and the rest of this world? Simonsen challenges our anthropocentric pursuit of knowledge, exploring the human relationship with itself as an element of the natural world. The collection follows the process as the narrator reckons with estrangement from his fellow organisms, and turns to the greater materiality of the world to find continuity, connection, and solace.