Isak Dinesen’s weird voodoo novel

Abstract

With its awkward generic shifts, odd repetitions, confusing spatial dislocations, unstable characters and inconclusive supernatural horrors, I here argue, bilingual Danish author Isak Dinesen’s The Angelic Avengers weirds our experience of living in a familiar, predictable and rule-governed universe. In my analysis, I especially foreground Dinesen’s use of West Indian voodoo, which is a prominent weirding device largely overlooked by the novel’s relatively few critics. Dinesen, I argue, wrote her novel amidst a widespread international voodoo and zombie vogue, tapping into popular representations of Caribbean witchcraft in nonfiction, pulp fiction and film. In The Angelic Avengers, I argue, Dinesen appropriates voodoo themes and characters, to conjure the presence of ominous agencies that trouble enlightened reason’s ability to explain and master the world.