Ivalu

When a person struggles to survive, things that were important suddenly lose their importance and quite different values come to the fore.
A young Inuit woman, Ivalu, survives from day to day because her family has no breadwinner. She has no shortage of suitors, but she remains true to her dream: she wants to become the wife of a white man. Then a Danish fox hunter, Basi, appears in the village and builds a house. When his henchman, the treacherous Minik, wants to kidnap Ivala and force her to become his wife, Basi rescues her and they begin to live together. Basi, who considers himself to be a member of a more advanced civilization, finds himself again and again in situations where he has to admit that his wife, considered primitive by the whites, makes much wiser decisions and knows better when they are in difficult, life-threatening situations.
Set in the early 1900s, the story is told from the perspective of the native Inuit who comment with wonder and unintentional humour on the unfamiliar situations that the newly arrived white men bring into their lives. The reader learns about the now extinct way of life of the Greenlanders, their way of thinking, participates in a polar bear hunt, and understands the workings of a group dynamic dependent on the wealth of the catch, where the unsuccessful are at the mercy of the successful. The book's seemingly simple language and the often harsh events described contrast remarkably.

Czech edition