NM: In your notes about the book, you mention wanting initially to tell the story of Jonah and the Whale. How do you see that story relating to the plotline of Hibernaculum?

AD: The Jonah story has always held a particular fascination for me. Both the Christian and the Islamic versions are so rich in symbolism and psychological truths that I could go on writing about them and never get bored (though the reader probably would). Hibernaculum was originally intended as part of a triptych called Three Jonahs. The other installments are a recently-finished novel called Jestor, and a poetry chapbook called Jonah’s Map of the Whale (which is currently with Old Scratch Press).  Each work explores the Jonah story from a different angle. In Hibernaculum, I imagined the process of hibernation and the hibernaculum dome itself as a “whale” that swallows the sleeper. Instead of  3 days, this descent into the underworld lasts 3 months or more.  Jonah had plotted his course: he was going to board a ship at Joppa Port and sail away to Tarshish (Gibraltar). That was his plan, but it wasn’t the right one (he was supposed to go to the city of Nineveh). We have our plan, our course, collectively and individually, and it doesn’t seem to be the right one either, and sooner or later we’re going to be tipped out of our own boat and forced to reconsider. That’s what Hibernaculum is about: a society forced to reconsider its “course”. 

Read the rest of the interview at Atticus Books!