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An entrancing adventure for today's troubled planet, this novel presents a fantastical tale of time travel and environmental calamity from celebrated Icelandic author Magnason.
About the author
Andri Snær Magnason is an Icelandic writer, born in Reykjavik on the 14th of July 1973. Andri has written novels, poetry, plays, short stories, essays and films. He studied Icelandic literature at the University of Iceland. His novel
LoveStar got a Philip K. Dick Special Citation, the Grand Prix de l'Imaginaire in France, and "Novel of The Year" in Iceland.
The Story of the Blue Planet was the first children's book to receive the Icelandic Literary Award and has been published or performed in 35 countries.
The Story of the Blue Planet received the Janusz Korczak Honorary Award in Poland 2000. Andri has collaborated with various artists. He has been active in the fight for preserving the nature of Iceland. His book
Dreamland: A Self Help Manual for a Frightened Nation takes on these issues and has sold more than 20,000 copies in Iceland. He co-directed
Dreamland, a feature-length documentary film based on the book. Footage from an interview with Andri can be seen in the Academy Award-winning documentary
Inside Job by Charles Ferguson. His most recent book,
The Casket of Time, has now been published in about 10 languages and was nominated as the best fantasy book in Finland in 2016, along with books by Ursula K. le Guin and David Mitchell. Andri Snær lives in Reykjavík with his wife Margrét, and four children.
Summary
An entrancing adventure for today’s troubled planet, The Casket of Time is a fantastical tale of time travel and environmental calamity from celebrated Icelandic author Andri Snær Magnason.
Teenage Sigrun is sick of all the apocalyptic news about the “situation” and, worse, her parents’ obsession with it. Sigrun’s family—along with everyone else—decides to hibernate in their TimeBoxes®, hoping for someone else to fix the world’s problems . But when Sigrun’s TimeBox® opens too early, she discovers an abandoned city overrun by wilderness and joins a band of kids who are helping a researcher named Grace solve the “situation.”
The world, according to Grace, is under an ancient curse. There once was a princess named Obsidiana, who was trapped in time by the greedy king of Pangea. To protect Obsidiana from dark and gloomy days, the king put her in a crystal casket made of spider silk woven so tightly that time itself couldn’t penetrate. The king’s greed for power doomed his kingdom and the trapped princess. Sigrun sees eerie parallels between the tale of Obsidiana and the present-day crisis, and realizes it’s up to her and her friends to break the ancient curse and fix the world.
Additional text
“The power of story animates a tale that communicates—but is not overpowered by—urgent messages.”
—Kirkus Reviews
