íslenskar bækur á ensku - Skálda bókabúð

Sía

Sýna

Boudoir
Sigrún Pálsdóttir
Teddy lives with her parents on a farm in the Icelandic wilderness. It’s 1962, and the world is changing, although you wouldn’t know it from the stark quiet of the lava fields and mountains that mark the boundaries of the young woman’s existence. But after two chance encounters, Teddy’s dreams of a world beyond begin to crystallise, albeit in strange and unexpected ways, as we follow one woman’s life over five decades, from farm to city to the skies.With piercing clarity and dry, unsentimental wit, Sigrun Palsdottir – historian, novelist, and one of Iceland’s most compelling contemporary voices – brilliantly captures the dissonance between how we are seen and who it is we are. Taking us from grandeur of rural Iceland to the glossy, sticky world of 1970s air travel, via check fraud, thwarted ambition and lost astronauts, Boudoir is a novel about reinvention, dislocation, and the forceful gravity of the lives and selves we think we’ve left behind.
3.990 kr.
Setja í körfu
The Mysterious Case of the Missing Crime Writer
Ragnar Jónasson
One winter evening bestselling crime author, Elín S. Jónsdóttir goes missing.
There are no clues to her disappearance and it is up to young detective, Helgi, to crack the case before it’s leaked to the press.
As he interviews the people closest to her – a publisher, an accountant, a retired judge – he realises that Elín’s life wasn’t what it seemed. In fact, her past is even stranger than her stories.
As the case of the missing crime writer becomes more mysterious by the hour, Helgi must uncover the secrets of a very unexpected life . . .
4.390 kr.
Setja í körfu
Advent
Gunnar Gunnarsson (1889-1975)
Every winter, in the days leading up to Christmas, Benedikt walks into the snowy mountains of Iceland to rescue sheep lost in the blizzards.
With his dog and his ram by his side, traversing wild snowstorms and crystalline nights, fuelled by endless cups of hot coffee, Benedikt dedicates himself to helping other living beings in need. It is midwinter in the harshest of landscapes, but this is a place of deep belonging and peace – brutal and remorseless yet irresistible and indispensable. It is also a time of peace, filled with the anticipation of that special time of year – the days before Christmas: Advent.
This enchanting Icelandic classic of one man’s selfless quest at Christmas time has been newly translated into English for the first time in 90 years.
3.990 kr.
Setja í körfu
Njála the short
Kristín Ragna Gunnarsdóttir
Highlights from the most popular saga of Icelanders!
This illustrated book is based on one of the most beloved sagas of Icelanders, The Saga of the Burning of Njál, Njál’s Saga or Njála. The saga is believed to have been written around 1270-1290 although the events of the story took place 300 years earlier.
Here the award-winning artist and author Kristín Ragna Gunnarsdóttir has depicted the broad outlines of Njála in a short text and pictures so that readers can become acquainted with some of the colourful characters and get a grasp of the main storyline. This is not the first time that Kristín Ragna has interpreted Njál’s Saga as she designed and illustrated The Njál’s Saga Tapestry; a 90-metre-long tapestry that was embroidered at Hvolsvöllur (njala.is).
5.690 kr.
Setja í körfu
The Poetic Edda
‘She sees, coming up a second time, Earth from the ocean, eternally green;the waterfalls plunge, an eagle soars above them,over the mountain hunting fish.’
After the terrible conflagration of Ragnarok, the earth rises serenely again from the ocean, and life is renewed. The Poetic Edda begins with The Seeress’s Prophecy which recounts the creation of the world, and looks forward to its destruction and rebirth. In this great collection of Norse-Icelandic mythological and heroic poetry, the exploits of gods and humans are related.
The one-eyed Odin, red-bearded Thor, Loki the trickster, the lovely goddesses and the giants who are their enemies walk beside the heroic Helgi, Sigurd the Dragon-Slayer, Brynhild the shield-maiden, and the implacable Gudrun. New in this revised translation are the quest-poem The Lay of Svipdag and The Waking of Angantyr, in which a girl faces down her dead father to retrieve his sword. Comic, tragic, instructive, grandiose, witty and profound, the poems of the Edda have influenced artists from Wagner to Tolkien and a new generation of video-game and film makers.
3.490 kr.
Setja í körfu
The Woman at 1,000 Degrees
Hallgrímur Helgason
3.990 kr.
Setja í körfu
The Quiet Mother
Arnaldur Indriðason
A woman is found murdered in her Reykjavík home, her apartment ransacked. On her desk lies a note with retired detective Konrad’s phone number. Days earlier, she had begged him to find the child she gave up nearly fifty years ago. But Konrad, reluctant to reopen old wounds, turned her away. Now, haunted by guilt, he vows to uncover the truth – for her and for himself.
As Konrad digs into the woman’s past, he is drawn into a web of secrets, lies and betrayal. Each revelation points to a hidden life that connects her death to a decades-old murder – and to shadows from Konrad’s own family history.
The Quiet Mother is a masterful blend of human tragedy and relentless suspense, where every discovery comes at a cost. Arnaldur Indridason once again proves why he is the voice of Nordic Noir, delivering a harrowing tale of guilt and redemption.
4.390 kr.
Setja í körfu
A Woman Looks Over Her Shoulder
Brynja Hjálmsdóttir
In A Woman Looks Over Her Shoulder, written by contemporary Icelandic poet Brynja Hjálmsdóttir and translated by Rachel Britton, one woman lives in a glass ball that is being shaken by someone else. This book of poems, however, is always shaking itself up, leaping between the extreme and the daily, the gross and the delicious, between being scared and being scary. These surreal, visceral, and somehow polite poems explore what it can be like to be a woman and to slither through and away from threat to find voice and form and power, no matter how strange. The apocalyptic utopia we arrive at in this book—The Whore’s City—is a perfect model to move to in one’s head: feminist, funny, odd, and a little disgusting, all towards transformation.
3.490 kr.
Setja í körfu
Your Absence is Darkness
Jón Kalman Stefánsson
When a local woman offers to reunite him with her sister, he realises he’s lost not only his bearings, but his memory as well: he doesn’t recognise either woman, and as their stories unfold, he is plunged into a history spanning centuries and lives: a city girl drawn to the fjords by the memory of a blue-eyed gaze; a farmer’s wife whose essay on the humble earthworm changes the course of lives; a pastor who writes to dead poets and falls in love with a stranger; a musician plagued by cosmic loneliness, who discovers that his life has been a lie; and an alcoholic transfixed by the night sky.
Faced with the violence of destiny and the effects of choices, made and avoided, that cascade between lives, each discovers the cost of following the magnetic needle of the heart. An incandescent, audacious novel about the misfortune of mortality and the strange salve of time, Your Absence is Darkness is a spellbinding story of death, desire and the perfect agony of star-crossed love.
Translated from the Icelandic by Philip Roughton
3.690 kr.
Setja í körfu
The Red Fish
Rúna (Sigrún Guðjónsdóttir)
Little Simbi feels like he’s the only bright red fish in the deep blue sea. So one day, he sets out on a journey to try to find other fish who look like him. The reader follows Simbi through oceans both cold and warm—sometimes he’s frightened and sometimes he’s excited. But no matter what, he never lets go of the hope that one day soon, he will discover a little, red playmate and find true happiness!
In The Red Fish, Rúna (Sigrún Guðjónsdóttir) effortlessly intertwines playful text and vivid pictures to tell a delightful and exciting story that has stood the test of time. The Red Fish was first published in 1972 and later republished with the current illustrations in 1985. This new edition introduces young readers to a classic gem of Icelandic children’s literature and is sure to enchant readers for generations to come.
The Red Fish
Over the course of an artistic career that has spanned illustration and graphic design, painting, ceramics, and large-scale murals, Rúna has received numerous awards and distinctions. These include the Order of the Falcon, Iceland’s highest honour, and a Lifetime Achievement Award from Iceland Design and Architecture.
4.690 kr.
Setja í körfu
Flowers on the roof
Ingibjörg Sigurðardóttir
The delightful story of Granny Gunn, who moves from her farm to town, bringing a little bit of the countryside with her. Beautifully illustrations by Brian Pilkington.
3.990 kr.
Setja í körfu
Bónus Poetry
Andri Snær Magnason
Bónus Poetry takes the reader on a mythological journey through the aisles of an undisclosed Bónus Supermarket branch, and is based on Dante’s Divina Commedia. Starting in “Paradiso” (the fruit and vegetable section), we travel through “Inferno” (meat and frozen goods) before finally ending up in the “Purgatorio” (cleaning products).
The book was initially published by Bónus Supermarkets in Iceland and sold at supermarket counters on eternal “special offer”. The author signed the same contract as every other producer: “If the consumer is harmed by the product, the producer is liable.” Bónus Poetry became the biggest selling poetry volume in the history of Iceland. No consumers have yet been harmed but please call the service desk in case of headaches, dizziness or general bursts of poem disorder.
2.490 kr.
Setja í körfu
The Mark
Fríða Ísberg
The Icelandic Psychological Association has prepared a test. They call it a sensitivity assessment: a way of measuring a person’s empathy and identifying the potential for anti-social behaviour.
In a few days’ time, Iceland will vote on whether to make the test compulsory for every citizen. The nation is bitterly divided. Some believe the test makes society safer; others decry it as a violation.
As the referendum draws closer, four people – Vetur, Eyja, Tristan and Ólafur – find themselves caught in the teeth of the debate. Each of them will have to reckon with uncomfortable questions: Where do the rights of society end and the rights of the individual begin? When does utopia become dystopia?No matter which side wins, they will all have to find a way to live with the result.
3.490 kr.
Setja í körfu
Touch
Ólafur Jóhann Ólafsson
When the pandemic hits, Kristofer is forced to shutter his successful restaurant in Reykjavik, sending him into a spiral of uncertainty, even as his memory seems to be failing. But an uncanny bolt from the blue—a message from Miko Nakamura, a woman whom he’d known in the sixties when they were students in London—both inspires and rattles him, as he is drawn inexorably back into a love story that has marked him for life. Even as the pandemic upends his world, Kristofer finds himself pulled toward an answer to the mystery of Miko’s sudden departure decades before, compelling him to travel to London and Japan as the virus threatens to shut everything down.
A heart-wrenching love story and an absorbing mystery, Touch delves into the secrets of the past to explore the hidden lives that we all possess, the pain and beauty of our past loves and friendships that continue to leave their mark on us. Searching and lyrically rendered by acclaimed author Olaf Olafsson, Touch is a stunning tribute to the weight of history and the complexities of the human heart.
3.490 kr.
Setja í körfu
The Prose Edda
Snorri Sturluson
Composed in Iceland in the 13th Century, The Prose Edda is the most renowned of all works of Scandinavian literature, taking readers on a voyage through an enthralling world of gods, giants, dwarfs and monsters. From the beginning of the universe to the dreaded Twilight of the Gods, this is the most extensive source of Norse mythology surviving today.
2.490 kr.
Setja í körfu
The Whispering Muse
Sjón
Valdimar Haraldsson is an eccentric Icelander with dubious ideas about the relationship between fish consumption and Nordic superiority. To his delight, in the spring of 1949, he is invited to join a Danish merchant ship on its voyage to the Black Sea.
He is less delighted with the lack of fish on the menu. Worse, his fellow travellers show no interest in his ‘Fish and Culture’ lecture. They prefer the enthralling tales of the second mate, Caeneus, who every evening regales them with his adventures aboard the Argo, on Jason’s legendary quest for the Golden Fleece.
A master storyteller, Sjón weaves together Greek and Nordic myths with the legacies of the Second World War in this mesmerising novel, which reminds us that everything is capable of change.
3.490 kr.
Setja í körfu
Red Milk
Sjón
Gunnar Kampen grows up in Reykjavík during the Second World War in a household fiercely opposed to Hitler and Nazism. A caring brother and son, at nineteen he seems set to lead a conventional life. Yet in the spring of 1958, he founds a covert, anti-Semitic nationalist party with ties to a burgeoning international network of neo-Nazis – a cause that will take him on a clandestine mission to England from which he never returns.
In this striking novel, inspired by one of the ringleaders of an Icelandic neo-Nazi group formed in the late 1950s, Sjón masterfully constructs the portrait of an ordinary young man who becomes a right-wing zealot. Exposing the roots of the far-right movements of today, Red Milk is a timely reminder that the seeds of extremism can be hard to detect and the allure of fascism remains dangerously potent.
3.490 kr.
Setja í körfu
From the Mouth of the Whale
Sjón
In this magical evocation of a vanished age, a poet and self-taught healer is banished in 1635 to a barren island off Iceland – a place darkened by superstition, poverty and cruelty.
With only a purple sandpiper for company, Jónas Pálmason retraces his path to exile, recalling his exorcism of a walking corpse, the massacre of innocent Basque whalers at the hands of local villagers and the deaths of three of his children.
But amid the cacophony of Copenhagen he will find hope and, finally, recognition of his enlightened ideas.
3.490 kr.
Setja í körfu
CoDex 1962
Sjón
Jósef Loewe enters the world as a lump of clay – carried in a hatbox by his Jewish father Leo, a fugitive in WWII Germany.
Taking refuge in a small-town guesthouse, Leo discovers a kindred spirit in the young woman who nurses him back to health and together they shape the clay into a baby. But en route to safety in Iceland, he is robbed of the ring needed to bring the child to life. It is not until 1962 that Jósef can be ‘born’, only to grow up with a rare disease. Fifty-three years on, it leads him into the hands of a power-hungry Icelandic geneticist, just when science and politics are threatening to lead us all down a dark, dangerous road.
At once playful and profoundly serious, this remarkable novel melds multiple genres into a unique whole: a mind-bending read and a biting, timely attack on nationalism.
3.490 kr.
Setja í körfu
Animal Life
Auður Ava Ólafsdóttir
3.490 kr.
Setja í körfu