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
Book Report: 101 Reykjavík
ByGD
Book Report: The Hitman’s Guide to Housecleaning
Iceland has one of the richest literary traditions in the world, and it is a tradition that is alive and well today, as evidenced by several oft-quoted statistics about literacy rate, books read per capita per year, and the highly debated “1 in 10 authorship” claim. Reykjavík is a UNESCO City of Literature – the first non-English speaking city to receive the title. And therein lies the rub.
Almost all of that literary activity is occurring in a language that only a few medievalists and the population of a small, sparsely populated island in the North Atlantic can understand. In such a tiny, saturated market, even record sales are not enough to guarantee a novel’s translation into English, and so most of the world remains unaware of Iceland’s tremendous literary output. Hallgrímur Helgason decided to fix that. He wrote The Hitman’s Guide to Housecleaning in English, from the point of view of a foreigner arriving in Iceland for the first time and with no preparation. Read More