The Discovery of Slowness

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The Discovery of Slowness (original

Nadolny's choice of hero becomes more problematic later in the narrative, where it seems that Franklin's sort of slowness was decidedly not what was wanted in the Barren Lands of the Arctic, where Franklin loses more than three-quarters of his expedition to starvation, murder, and exposure. Alas for both the historical Franklin and Nadolny's oddly endearing counterfeit, Franklin's death on his final Arctic expedition of 1845 leaves unresolved the ultimate merits of his slow and steady disposition. Despite this, Nadolny's novel spurred tremendous interest in Germany, most notably in the business world, where seminars for executives on how to follow the philosophy of slowness became, for a time, de rigueur.

Nadolny wrote the foreword to an important non-fiction work on the 1845 Franklin Expedition, Der eisige Schlaf, published as Frozen In Time: The Fate of the Franklin Expedition in the original English.

Content

Important characters

The character descriptions refer, for simplicity, unless otherwise stated, to the protagonist John Franklin.

• (Sir) John Franklin (Protagonist)
• Hannah Franklin (Mother)
• Tom Barker (speedy classmate and opponent, later on a friend during school)
• Sherard Philip Lound (schoolfriend)
• Dr. Orme (Teacher, fatherly figure)
• Ann Chapell (Aunt)
• Matthew Flinders (Navigator, Husband of Ann Chapell, makes Franklin familiar with navigation and takes him on the first trip to Australia)
• Mary Rose (Prostitute in Portsmouth, his first sexual experience)
• Denis Lacy (Midshipman on the Investigator, speedy opponent during the Australia trip)
• Flora Reed (Widow, second love)
• Eleanor Porden
  (first wife)
• Eleanor Anne Franklin (Daughter)
• Jane Griffin
  (Second wife, friend of Eleanor Porden)
• Sophia Cracroft (Niece and last love)

References

External links

• Robert Macfarlane, "Read it on the autobahn," Review of The Discovery of Slowness, London Review of Books, Vol. 25 No. 24 · 18 December 2003.