IN THE SHADOW OF THE ARK

Analysis

Anne Provoost enthralls the reader with a chronicle of quickly changing events in what is a calmly developing story, with scenes that appeal to the imagination.

For this purpose she uses a sober, aloof, slightly solemn style that occasionally strikes a somewhat Biblical note. Still, she does not follow the Bible story entirely faithfully: she adds new characters and particularly places personal contemporary emphases. For example, she confronts the human and tight-knit culture of the marsh-dwellers from which Re Jana comes with the strictly controlled lifestyle of the ark-builders.

She questions what each person considers good and evil. She has reservations about the control that the one god of the ark-builder demands over the actions of his subjects, and their free will. But what she finds particularly perplexing is the notion that a merciful god should select some people and allow the others to endure a dreadful fate, on very questionable grounds. In this way this Old Testament story, which in the first instance carries the reader along with a turbulent adventure, also becomes a metaphor for the contemporary world.