Land of Love and Ruins

Zusatztext “It stands to good reason that the protagonist of Eir’s debut novel would idolize a legendary Icelandic heroine, Gudrun Osvifursdottir. Local lore has it that when Gudrun, who may or may not have been a real person, was asked about the men in her life, she famously replied, 'To him I was worst whom I loved best.' The unnamed narrator of this tale in journal entries suggests that the same statement could be made about the way the Icelandic people treat their motherland. Trying to find her bearings after Iceland’s financial crisis, the narrator is additionally unmoored by her search for love. Even if the novel is a thinly disguised lament about environmental degradation and societal ills, which can be wearing, the narrator’s voice is refreshing, and her concerns are authentic; add to that a tour of gorgeous Iceland and parts of Europe through the eyes of a native. Eir’s narrator challenges readers: 'Won’t you continue to be considered a nationalist if you say that the citizens of a country should be responsible for their fosterland and its natural resources?'” —Poornima Apte, Booklist Informationen zum Autor Oddný Eir Ævarsdóttir (1972) is an Icelandic author. She has received advanced degrees in political philosophy from the University of Iceland and The Sorbonne. In addition to publishing four novels and several books of poetry and essays, she has worked in the art world as a lecturer and gallerist, has received a grant to study archives and museums in Iceland, has been an environmental activist, and has collaborated with the musical artist Björk in composing lyrics for her albums Biophilia and Vulnicura . Land of Love and Ruins won the EU Prize for Literature and the Icelandic Women's Literature Prize. Oddný Eir lives in the Icelandic countryside, by the glacier Eyjafjallajökull. Philip Roughton is an award-winning translator of Icelandic literature, currently residing in Reykjavík. He earned a PhD in Comparative Literature from the University of Colorado, Boulder, with specialties in medieval Icelandic, medieval Chinese, and Latin literature, and wrote his dissertation on medieval Icelandic translations of saints' and apostles' lives. He has taught modern and world literature at CU-Boulder, and medieval literature at the University of Iceland. His translations include works by many of Iceland's best-known writers, including the Nobel laureate Halldór Laxness, Jón Kalman Stefánsson, Bergsveinn Birgisson, Steinunn Sigurðardóttir, and others. He was recently awarded the 2015 American-Scandinavian Foundation Translation Competition Prize, for his translation of Halldór Laxness' novel Gerpla ( Wayward Heroes ). Klappentext "In the wake of Iceland's financial crisis, a young author, recently separated and feeling out the uncertain terrain of a new relationship, finds herself questioning the foundations of love and family lives, bonds to country and the earth. Stirred by a dream about an old Viking woman on a pilgrimage, she sets out on a quest to the the ruins of the homes of her ancestors, where they tried to live in harmony with nature and each other. Her guiding questions are as essential as their answers are elusive: How do we create a home for love? How can we nourish personal space while sustaining intimacy and desire with a partner? How can we go, not back, but forward to nature? Drawn both to her archaeologist brother and her ornithologist lover, she explores alternate forms that those relationships might take. Her search brings her all over Iceland and abroad to Paris, Strasbourg, Basel, and the Lake District home of famous Romantic siblings Dorothy and William Wordsworth. Written in the form of a diary that pans from small details to big questions and weaves elements of philosophy, history, archaeology, ecology, eroticism, and literature into a beautifully patterned whole, Oddnay invents a new...

Product details

• Authors: Oddny Eir, Oddný Eir
• Assisted by: Philip Roughton (Translation)
• Publisher: Simon & Schuster USA
• Languages: English
• Product format: Paperback
• Released: 31.10.2016
• EAN: 9781632060723
• ISBN: 978-1-63206-072-3
• Subjects: Fiction > Narrative literature; FICTION / Women, FICTION / Epistolary, FICTION / World Literature / Netherlands