English books from Iceland
Recommended English books written by authors from Iceland (28)
Travel the world without leaving your chair.
If you speak English here are some English books from Iceland for the next part of the "Read Around The World Challenge".
11.
Jar City by Arnaldur Indridason EN
Description:
An old man is found murdered in his Reykjavik flat. A cryptic note and a photograph of a young girl's grave are left behind. DID THE DEAD MAN'S PAST COME BACK TO HAUNT HIM? Inspector Erlendur discovers that several decades ago the victim was accused, but not convicted, of an unsolved crime. As he follows a fascinating trail of strange forensic evidence, Inspector Erlendur uncovers secrets that are much larger than the murder of one man - dark secrets that have been carefully guarded for many, many years... 'A fascinating window on an unfamiliar world as well as an original and puzzling mystery... continue
13.
Magma by Thora Hjoerleifsdottir EN
Description:
A poetic, highly poisonous cocktail of alienated love, sex and pain and a young woman's haunting experience in an era of pornification, by one of Iceland's most provocative writers.
14.
Moonstone : The Boy Who Never Was: A Novel by Sjón EN
Description:
Reykjavik, 1918. The eruptions of the Katla volcano darken the sky night and day. Yet despite the natural disaster, the shortage of coal and the Great War still raging in the outside world, life in the small capital goes on as always. Sixteen-year-old Mani Steinn lives for the movies. Awake, he lives on the fringes of society. Asleep, he dreams in pictures, the threads of his own life weaving through the tapestry of the films he loves. When the Spanish flu epidemic comes ashore, killing hundreds of townspeople and forcing thousands to their sick beds, the shadows that linger at the edges of ex... continue
15.
Njal's Saga by Unknown EN
Description:
Written in the thirteenth century, Njal's Saga is a story that explores perennial human problems-from failed marriages to divided loyalties, from the law's inability to curb human passions to the terrible consequences when decent men and women are swept up in a tide of violence beyond their control. It is populated by memorable and complex characters like Gunnar of Hlidarendi, a powerful warrior with an aversion to killing, and the not-so-villainous Mord Valgardsson. Full of dreams, strange prophecies, violent power struggles, and fragile peace agreements, Njal's Saga tells the compelling stor... continue
16.
One Station Away by Olaf Olafsson EN
Description:
From the critically acclaimed Olaf Olafsson, an intimate yet sweeping story of a New York neurologist and the three women who change his life An overlooked pianist who finally receives fraught success after decades of disappointment. An elusive dancer whose untimely death her fiancé is desperate to untangle. A mysterious patient who is comatose after a violent accident. These are the three women who animate Olaf Olafsson’s brilliantly rendered One Station Away. Magnus, a New York neurologist—son to one, lover to another, and doctor to a third—is the thread that binds these women’s stories toge... continue
17.
Description:
Gunnar Kampen grows up in Iceland during the Second World War in a household fiercely opposed to Hitler and Nazism. At nineteen he seems set for a conventional, dutiful life. And yet in the spring of 1958, he founds a covert, anti-Semitic nationalist party, a cause that will take him on a clandestine mission to England from which he never returns.
Inspired by one of the ringleaders of a little-known neo-Nazi group that was formed in Iceland in the 1950s, Sjon's portrait of an ardent fascist is as thought-provoking as it is disturbing. As this taut and fascinating novel suggests, the se... continue
18.
Reykjavík : A Crime Story by Ragnar Jonasson, Katrín Jakobsdóttir EN
Description:
What happened to Lára?
Iceland, 1956. Fourteen-year-old Lára decides to spend the summer working for a couple on the small island of Videy, just off the coast of Reykjavík. In early August, the girl disappears without a trace. Time passes, and the mystery becomes Iceland‘s most infamous unsolved case. What happened to the young girl? Is she still alive? Did she leave the island, or did something happen to her there?
Thirty years later, as the city of Reykjavík celebrates its 200th anniversary, journalist Valur Robertsson begins his own investigation into... continue
19.
Snowblind by Ragnar Jónasson EN
Description:
Taut and terrifying, a startling debut from an extraordinary new talent, taking Nordic Noir to soaring new heights Siglufjorour: an idyllically quiet fishing village in Northern Iceland, where no one locks their doors, and which is accessible only via a small mountain tunnel. Ari Thor Arason: a rookie policeman on his first posting, far from his girlfriend in Reykjavik, with a past that he s unable to leave behind. When a young woman is found lying half-naked in the snow, bleeding and unconscious, and a highly esteemed, elderly writer falls to his death in the local theater, Ari is dragged str... continue
20.
Summer Light, and Then Comes the Night : A Novel by Jon Kalman Stefansson EN
Description:
From the "Icelandic Dickens (Irish Examiner)," a writer who "shares the elemental grandeur of Cormac McCarthy" (Times Literary Supplement), comes this profound and playful masterwork of literature--winner of the Icelandic Literature Prize and longlisted for France's Prix Medicis Étrangere--that ponders the beauty and mystery of life and our deepest existential questions. In small places, life becomes bigger. Sometimes distance from the world's tumult can open our hearts and our dreams. In a village of four hundred souls, the infinite light of an Icelandic summer makes its inhabitants want to e... continue