Reading in Reykjavík

Icelandic title: Sendiherrann, ljóð í óbundnu máli German title: Der Botschafter (2009) Danish title: Ambassadøren (2008) Genre: Literary fiction Year of publication: 2006 Setting & time: Iceland Lithuania; contemporary Bragi Ólafsson is an Icelandic poet, playwright and novelist (and former member of the band The Sugarcubes ). This novel was nominated for the Icelandic Literary Prize and the Nordic Council's Literature Prize in 2006. It was published in English in 2010. The novel tells the story of Sturla Jón Jónsson, a middle-aged Icelandic poet who has just published what he intends to be his last book of poems. He is on his way to a poetry festival in Lithuania when the story begins. Once he is there trouble starts piling up, starting with a man back home in Iceland who accuses him of plagiarism and escalating from there. This novel is full of very subtle humour and observations of Icelandic society and Icelanders, and specifically of what it‘s like to be a...

Icelandic title: Brekkukotsannáll (Literally “Annals of Brekkukot”)   Genre : Literary fiction, historical Year of publication : 1957 Setting & time : Reykjavik area, Iceland; beginning of the 20th century. This novel by Iceland's only Nobel prize-winner, the first he published after winning the prize, boasts what is the most memorable opening sentence I have ever read in a novel: "A wise man once said that next to losing its mother, there is nothing more healthy for a child than to lose its father." Álfgrímur (the narrator of the story) is a young boy abandoned by his mother and raised by his foster-grandparents at Brekkukot, a small house in what is now nearly the center of Reykjavik but was, at the time of the story, one of a small cluster of buildings separate from the commercial and administrative center of town. The house is a haven for people who are down on their luck and acts as a sort of social center for the community and a counterpoint for the ...

I decided to review this book even if I didn’t read it in January because, frankly, I haven’t been to the library all month and it suddenly dawned on me that I only have 3 days left to do a Buchmesse review for January. Genre : Generational novel Year of publication : 1983 Setting and time : Reykjavík, 1940s to 1960s English title, translator and year of publication : Devil's Island ; David MacDuff and Magnus Magnusson; 1999 German title, translator and year of publication : Die Teufelsinsel ; Marita Bergsson; 1997 This story covers, in realistic detail, a couple of decades in the life of an Icelandic working-class family in the years following the Second World War. Shortly after the end of the war they settle in a house in the middle of a neighbourhood of Nissen huts left behind when the American occupation ended. These neighbourhoods were seen as slums, but they were a much-needed solution to a housing problem caused by the hundreds of people who left their homes in the...

Genre : Lad-lit Year of publication : 1996 Setting & time : Reykjavík, Iceland; contemporary German and English title : 101 Reykjavik Gex-X slacker Hlynur spends his days moping around, watching porn, chatting on the Internet, bar-hopping and spending his unemployment benefits on booze and Ecstasy, all the while enjoying living in what we Icelanders call “Hotel Mom”. Two unexpected pregnancies precipitate an existential crisis, but in the end he manages to overcome it. This is a not-so-subtle twist on the classic coming-of-age storyline, except the character doesn’t grow and doesn’t learn anything and just stays the same. The language is creative and verbose, sometime overwhelmingly so. For example, the Icelandic version has one sentence that is over four pages long (can anyone confirm that this structure has been kept in the English and/or German versions?). There has been some mention of the language in the English translation coming across as stilted and unnatural at tim...

The Icelandic book I read this month and had planned to review for the challenge was Eftirmáli Regndropanna by Einar Már Guðmundsson, but as it turns out, it doesn’t seem to have been translated into German (I was convinced it had been, but I can’t confirm it). As it is too late in the month to find another book to review, I am instead reviewing another book by Einar that I read several years ago: Englar Alheimsins , which was translated into English as Angels of the Universe (by the late, brilliant Bernard Scudder and published in 1995 and again in 1997) and into German as Engel des Universums (by Angelika Gundlach and published in 1998). It is his best known and most popular book to date, and has been included on the literature curriculum in Icelandic schools. It earned the author the Nordic Council's Literature Prize in 1995. The story has been filmed (the author writing the script) and I can recommend the film, although not for people who only enjoy happy endings. The ...