Reading in Reykjavík

This is a "crimes of the past revisited" story, something Arnaldur has done before in several of his other books (e.g. Silence of the Grave , The Draining Lake and Strange Shores ). Told in chapters alternating between 1944 and the modern day, it tells the story of how the murder of an old man sets a retired police detective on the trail of another, unsolved, murder that happened during WW2 in Reykjavík. This is not a detective Erlendur story and does not feature either of his two closest collaborators on the police force but instead introduces a new character, a recently retired detective named Konráð. I don't know if the English title given for this book in the Wikipedia entry on Arnaldur and elsewhere on the web (except that literature.is gets it (almost) right), is the one that will be used for the eventual translation, but to me it looks suspiciously like a Google Translate blooper. Skuggasund actually means "Shadow Alley " and is the name of a stre...

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...

Genre : Non-fiction, memoir/travelogue Year of publication : 2001 Setting & time : Iceland; 1996 and 1997 Nancy Marie Brown and her husband, writer Charles Fergus, came to Iceland with their young son to spend the summer of 1996 while still reeling from a family tragedy. Fergus recounted the story of their stay there in Summer at Little Lava , which I reviewed some years ago. I reposted the review yesterday. When I became aware that Nancy was also a writer, I decided to read one of her books and of the two available in the National Library, I chose this one, as to me it’s the more interesting of the two. In a way it picks up from where Fergus left off, showing how Nancy fell in love with the Icelandic horse breed and returned to Iceland a year later determined to buy a couple of horses of her own and take them home to Pennsylvania. She recounts her adventures and experiences among Icelandic horse people (a unique breed in themselves) and her search for the perfect horse (for ...

Originally published in June 2005, on my original 52 Books blog. I chuckled when I first came across this book. The title, plain and serious as it is to an outsider, is unintentionally funny to an Icelander. Little Lava is the abandoned farm in NW-Iceland where Charles Fergus, his wife Nancy and son William spent the summer of 1996. But Little Lava, or Litla Hraun as it is known in Icelandic, is also a prison in southern Iceland. In fact, it’s THE prison - the one where the majority of Icelandic criminals are sent to serve out their sentences. Fergus even mentions it in the book, and it is probably the reason why he chose to translate the farm’s name into English, in order to distance it from the prison image. I can’t say he has quite succeeded, but gives the reader who is in the know something to smile about. Fergus’ original plan had been to write a simple nature study, but when he found his mother murdered in her home, the plans changed. Instead of becoming just a place to stay ...

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...

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 ...

According to Amazon UK this book is due out in Britain in an English translation in July. I could find no information about publication in the USA. Original Icelandic title: Aska (Ash) Genre: Murder mystery Year of publication: 2007 No. in series: 3 Series detective: Thora Gudmundsdottir Type of mystery: Murder Type of investigator: Lawyer Setting & time: Reykjavik and the Westman Islands, Iceland, 2007. Three desiccated corpses and a head are discovered in the basement of a house that is being excavated after having lain under volcanic ash since the 1973 volcanic eruption in the Westman Islands . It falls to lawyer Þóra (Thora) to represent the man who found the bodies in the basement of his childhood home, since certain facts of the matter have cast suspicion on him, not only for the deaths of the four men, but also for the recent death of a woman from the islands who is in some way connected to the head and possibly the bodies as well. Yrsa Sigurðardóttir keeps getting ...

This book is due to be published in Britain and the USA in April. Original Icelandic title: Sér grefur gröf Genre: Murder mystery Year of publication: 2006 No. in series: 2 Series detective: Þóra Guðmundsdóttir Type of investigator: Lawyer Setting & time: Snæfellsnes, Iceland; contemporary Story: Þóra’s client, a hotel owner in Snæfellsnes (south-western Iceland), wants to sue the people who sold him the land for the hotel on the basis of the place being haunted. This would not be a problem if the hotel were an ordinary one, but it is a new age health spa and some of the staff claim to be sensitive to that sort of thing, the owner included. Þóra goes up there to investigate and prepare the lawsuit (or rather to dissuade the client to go on with it), but arrives in the middle of a murder investigation. The architect who designed the hotel has been brutally murdered, and when a second person connected with the hotel is murdered as well, Þóra’s client is arrested on suspicion ...

Icelandic title: Þriðja táknið (literally: The Third Symbol ) Genre: Mystery Year of publication: 2005 No. in series: 1 Series detective: Þóra Guðmundsdóttir Type of investigator: Lawyer Setting & time: Reykjavík (mostly), Iceland; contemporary Story: Icelandic Lawyer Þóra (Thora in English) is hired by the parents of a German history student who was found murdered in the offices of the history department of the University of Iceland. They want her to help Matthew, an investigator they have sent over from Germany, to find out why their son was murdered and why his body was mutilated. Since they are not convinced that the suspect the police have arrested is guilty, they also want Þóra and Matthew to find the real killer. The victim had been researching and comparing the history of witch hunts in Germany and Iceland and was the leader of a clique that practiced magic rituals. The mutilation of his body is connected to a magic spell found in an old grimoire, so it would seem l...

I wasn’t sure if I should post this review right away, considering that the book will probably not be published in English until 2010, but then I though “why not?” It just means the review will be there for those who want to know something about the book beforehand. Unfortunately I do not have an English title for it, but I will post it once I know what it will be. Added April 7, 2011: The English title is Outrage , and it is due out in June of this year. Genre: Police procedural Year of publication: 2008 No. in series: 9 Series detective: Detective Erlendur Sveinsson and colleagues, of the Reykjavík detective force Type of investigator: Police Setting & time: Reykjavík, Iceland; contemporary Story: Erlendur, the leading investigator in the previous books, is away on vacation, and the detective in this book is his colleague Elínborg. She is called in on a murder case involving a young man found with his throat cut and some Rohypnol tablets in his pocket. Was the ...

Year published: 1990 Genre: Travel (non-fiction) Setting & time: Norway, the Shetland Islands, The Faeroe Islands, Iceland, Greenland, Canada (Newfoundland); 1980's In the mid 1980's the author took a journey tracing the route thought to have been taken by the Vikings in their quest for new lands to settle, from Norway to Canada, through the Shetland Islands, the Faeroes, Iceland and Greenland. It took him four months and he visited the countries in the same order as the Vikings did, in each country visiting lonely places and trying to find and understand the Viking heritage. In the Shetlands he searched for speakers of Norn, the old Nordic language of the islands that was all but eradicated by the British and is not spoken fluently by anyone any more. In the Faeroe Islands he visits the loneliest place he can find, and later witnesses a grindadráp , a slaughter of pilot whales. In Iceland he visits Askja, a spectacular crater lake in the hightlands, and in Greenland he ...

Title in translation: Arctic Chill Series detective: Erlendur Sveinsson and co. No. in series: 7 Year of publication: 2005 Type of mystery: Murder, police procedural Type of investigator: Police Setting & time: Reykjavík, 2005 Number of murders: 1 Some themes: Immigrants, racism, child abuse, missing persons Story: On a frosty January morning a young boy, half Thai, half Icelandic, is found stabbed to death outside the building where he lived. Most people assume that the crime was racially motivated, but Erlendur is not so sure. He and his team patiently sift through evidence and question suspects, and other cases intrude. When the murder weapon is finally found it leads the investigators down a disturbing path. Review: When I reviewed the last book I mentioned that the reiterations of the police officers' personal lives and problems was getting boring. Fortunately it is not so in this story. Arnaldur only uses very brief summaries to ensure new readers know what...