ByGD
My latest dive into Icelandic literature is The Story of the Blue Planet by Andri Snær Magnason, translated by Julian Meldon D’Arcy. At first every Icelandic novel I read was infuriatingly opaque. But with this book, I feel like I’m starting to get the Icelandic novel.
Now the dreamlike atmosphere that so confused me in The Children of Reindeer Woods has started to feel familiar; sometimes I can tell when something is supposed to be funny; sometimes I can even decode the symbols. Of course, Blue Planet is a kids’ book.
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ByGD
You’re supposed to read the book first. The movie is never as good and it will limit your imagination when you do read the book. I know this. But I watched Baltasar Kormákur’s movie, 101 Reykjavík, before I knew it was based on Hallgrímur Helgason’s novel. I really liked the movie. It felt a lot like an Icelandic Slackers; that’s the primary difference between the book and the movie. Read More
ByGD
Within hours of my arrival in Sweden, I found myself surrounded by tall, thin boys shaking seawater out of their blonde hair, naked except for their soaked-to-translucent tighty-whiteys. It seemed that stereotypes about Sweden’s liberal behavior were confirmed. That night was a first for me, but not the kind you’re thinking. Read More
ByGD
Heaven and Hell is a ghost story. No, that’s not true. Heaven and Hell, by Icelandic novelist Jón Kalman Stefánsson, is merely narrated by ghosts. This tragic chorus of post-mortal souls belonging to an isolated fishing village bear witness to one boy’s tragic loss.
Heaven and Hell is a quiet, internal novel about a few crucial days in the life of a lonely boy who loses his only friend. No, that’s not true. In Heaven and Hell, translated by Philip Roughton, the boy’s friend, Bárður, makes a fatal mistake while preoccupied with the words in a borrowed book, and the boy risks his own life to return the copy of Paradise Lost. These are only the events in the book.
Heaven and Hell, like the book that killed Bárður, is an epic poem revolving around the very central questions of existence: Why bother living, when it is so hard? Why should we who live be allowed to do so when so many others are dead? Is it even possible to be truly alive when we are truly alone?
When there is a choice between life and death, most choose life.
This much is certain. But almost nothing else is. Read More
