Steller’s Rhytine, better known as the « sea cow », was discovered in 1741 by the German naturalist Georg Wilhelm Steller. It was during an expedition in the icy waters of the North Pacific that he met this gigantic marine animal with a tragic fate – since it will be permanently extinguished 27 years after its first contact with humans. At the same time an adventure novel, scientific epic and immersed in the intimacy of a stranded crew, The Extinction of Sea Cows takes us into the life of a great explorer launched into the battle of the European scholars of the 18th century to appropriate new lands and still unknown species. Until finding these sea cows that have become mythical, whose flesh has the power to save hungry shipwrecked people, its fat to warm them, and its mermaid airs to intoxicate them.
But if Steller’s Rhythine has invaded the narrator’s imagination, what is the name of this obsession? Carried by a poetic, sensory writing, The extinction of sea cows questions the possibility of preserving what threatens to disappear: an animal, a grandfather, a language, a family history. Through the figure of Steller, a scientist haunted by the beauty and fragility of life, Adèle Rosenfeld proposes an upsetting reflection on the disappearance, silent pain and the need to transmit
Source : grasset.fr
