Down Where Monsters Dwell is a folkloric Icelandic horror-fable about Halla, a widowed farm mistress who takes in an abandoned baby believed to be a changeling, raises her as a daughter, and finally has to surrender her to the pagan supernatural world that understands her better than Christian men ever will. It wants to be […]
Friðsemd is a comic, dystopian, grief-stricken eco-thriller about loneliness, friendship, climate catastrophe, bad corporations, pulp fiction, and the dangerous human need for stories to make sense. It is narrated by Friðsemd, an anxious older Icelandic woman living in Eskifjörður in a future where climate change has already transformed Iceland. The southern lowlands have partly sunk […]
Frumbyrjur is a short, intense rural novel set on a remote Icelandic farm called Kölduhamrar, mostly over Christmas Eve and Christmas night. It is about birth, infertility, marriage, bodily fear, rural labour, masculinity, shame, tenderness, supernatural intuition, and the way new life can arrive mixed with death. Its title means something like “first-time mothers,” and […]
This is a historical, lyrical novel set mainly in the Westfjords of Iceland in 1615, during and after the massacre of shipwrecked Basque whalers usually remembered as the “Spanish killings.” It is narrated by Pétur, the priest at Meyjarhóll on Brúnisandur, who writes through a stormy October day and night to a beloved “you.” The […]
Fríða Ísberg’s Huldukonan is a multi-generational novel that traces how grief, secrecy, and desire become transformed into folklore, and how that folklore, once established, begins to shape the emotional lives of those who inherit it. Set primarily in the remote fjord of Dýrleifarvík, the novel moves between the early twentieth century and the year 1984, […]
Yrsa Sigurðardóttir’s novel Syndafall is a dark psychological thriller that follows several seemingly separate lives which gradually, and tragically, intersect. The novel explores guilt, repression, moral responsibility and the devastating consequences of mistakes that are never confronted. Although the narrative shifts between characters, the story unfolds as a single chain of cause and effect, in […]
“Kletturinn” is a compelling novel that weaves together past and present, secrets and friendships, and the complexities of human relationships. It revolves around Einar, a man who is forced to confront a dark event from his past that has haunted him for two decades. The novel is divided into several parts, each offering a glimpse […]
The novel is narrated in first person by Logn, a trans woman living alone in modern Reykjavík. She’s been searching the city’s beaches for a suitable place to end her life due to the despair of waiting six years for bottom surgery. She leaves a letter to her twin brother Trausti, who’s been visiting her […]
The novel is a story set in a slightly futuristic, dystopian version of Reykjavík, where customer service is predominantly handled by holograms, and a comprehensive virtual assistant named Zoé has replaced the likes of Siri and Alexa. The core of this society is the Empathy Test, which determines an individual’s status as either a “marked […]