Search results for ""author philip roughton""

A new translation of Nobel Prize-winning author Halldór Laxness's masterpieceLate one snowy midwinter night, in a remote Icelandic fishing village, a penniless woman arrives by boat. She comes with her daughter, the young but gutsy Salka Valka. The two must forge a life in this remote place, where everyone is at the mercy of a single wealthy merchant, and where everything revolves around fish. After her mother's tragic death, Salka grows into a fiercely independent-minded adult - cutting off her hair, educating herself and becoming an advocate for the town's working class. A coming-of-age story, a feminist tale, a lament for Iceland's poor - this is the funny, tender, epic story of Salka Valka. 'Laxness is a poet who writes to the edges of the pages, a visionary who allows us a plot' Daily TelegraphTRANSLATED BY PHILIP ROUGHTON

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A creepy, compelling thriller, SOMEONE TO WATCH OVER ME is the fifth Thora Gudmundsdottir novel from Yrsa, 'Iceland's answer to Stieg Larsson' (Daily Telegraph). A young man with Down's Syndrome has been convicted of burning down his care home and killing five people, but a fellow inmate at his secure psychiatric unit has hired Thora to prove Jakob is innocent. If he didn't do it, who did? And how is the multiple murder connected to the death of Magga, killed in a hit and run on her way to babysit?

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One girl missing. Another found dead. Only one detective can solve this case.'One of the greats of modern crime fiction' Sunday TimesWhen a young woman known for drug smuggling goes missing, her elderly grandparents have no choice but to call the retired Detective Konrád.Still looking for his own father's murderer, Konrád agrees to investigate the case.But digging into the past reveals more than he set out to discover, and a strange connection to a little girl who drowned in the Reykjavík city pond decades ago recaptures everyone's attention.A brilliant, chilling tale of broken dreams and children who have nowhere to turn.'The undisputed king of the Icelandic thriller' Guardian'An international literary phenomenon - and it's easy to see why. His novels are gripping, authentic, haunting, and lyrical' Harlan Coben

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Longlisted for the Man Booker International Prize 2017Keflavik: a town that may be the darkest place in Iceland, surrounded by black lava fields, hemmed in by a sea that may not be fished, and site of the U.S. military base, whose influences shaped Icelandic culture from the '50s to the dawning of the new millennium. Ari - a writer and publisher - lands back in Keflavik from Copenhagen. His father is dying, and he is flooded by memories of his youth in the '70s and '80s, listening to Pink Floyd and the Beatles, raiding American supply lorries and discovering girls. And one girl he could never forget. Layered through Ari's story is that of his grandparents in a village on the eastern coast, a world away from modern Keflavik. For his grandfather Oddur, life at sea was a destiny; for Margrét its elemental power brings only loneliness and fear. Both the story of a singular family and an epic that sparkles with love, pain and lifelong desire - with all of human life - Fish have no Feet is a novel of profound beauty and wisdom by a major international writer.By the author of the acclaimed trilogy, Heaven and Hell, The Sorrow of Angels and The Heart of Man.

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A chilling new case for Thora Gudmundsdottir, from Iceland's answer to Stieg Larsson.When all contact is lost with two Icelanders working in a harsh and sparsely populated area on the northeast coast of Greenland, Thora is hired to investigate. Is there any connection with the woman who vanished from the site some months earlier? Why are the locals so hostile? And could one of the team staying at the site with Thora be responsible for the disappearances?Already an international bestseller, this fourth book to feature Thora Gudmundsdottir ('a delight' - Guardian) is chilling, unsettling and compulsively readable.

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It is three weeks since the boy came to town, carrying a book of poetry to return to the old sea captain - the poetry that did for his friend Bárður. Three weeks, but already Bárður's ghost has faded. Snow falls so heavily that it binds heaven and earth together. As the villagers gather in the inn to drink schnapps and coffee while the boy reads to them from Shakespeare's Hamlet, Jens the postman stumbles in half dead, having almost frozen to his horse. On his next journey to the wide open fjords he is accompanied by the boy, and both must risk their lives for each other, and for an unusual item of mail. The Sorrow of Angels is a timeless literary masterpiece; in extraordinarily powerful language it brings the struggle between man and nature tangibly to life. It is the second novel in Stefánsson's epic and elemental trilogy, though all can be read independently.

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A portrait of an artist trapped by convention and expectations but longing for the chaos that can set her free. Growing up on a farm in early twentieth-century rural Iceland, Karitas Jónsdóttir, one of six siblings, yearns for a new life. An artist, Karitas has a powerful calling and is determined to never let go of her true being, one unsuited for the conventional. But she is powerless against the fateful turns of real life and all its expectations of women. Pulled back time and again by design and by chance to the Icelandic countryside—as dutiful daughter, loving mother, and fisherman’s wife—she struggles to thrive, to be what she was meant to be. Spanning decades and set against a breathtaking historical canvas, Karitas Untitled, an award-winning classic of Icelandic literature, is a complex and immersive portrait of an artist’s conflict with love, family, nature, and a country unaccustomed to an untraditional woman—but most of all, with herself and the creative instincts she has no choice but to follow.

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The third crime novel from international bestseller Yrsa Sigurdardottir, ASHES TO DUST is tense, taut and terrifying - not to be missed for fans of Nordic Noir. Thora peered at the floor, but couldn't see anything that could have frightened Markus that much, only three mounds of dust. She moved the light of her torch over them. It took her some time to realize what she was seeing-- and then it was all she could do not to let the torch slip from her hand. 'Good God,' she said. She ran the light over the three faces, one after another. Sunken cheeks, empty eye-sockets, gaping mouths; they reminded her of photographs of mummies she'd once seen in National Geographic. 'Who are these people?''I don't know,' said Markus . . . Bodies are discovered in one of the excavated houses at a volcanic tourist attraction dubbed 'The Pompeii of the North'.Markus Magnusson, who was only a teenager when the volcano erupted, falls under suspicion and hires attorney Thora Gudmundsdottir to defend him - but when his childhood sweetheart is murdered his case starts to look more difficult, and the locals seem oddly reluctant to back him up . . .

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After coming through the blizzard that almost cost them everything, Jens and the boy are far from home, in a fishing community at the edge of the world. Taken in by the village doctor, the boy once again has the sense of being brought back from the grave. But this is a strange place, with otherworldly inhabitants, including flame-haired Álfheiður, who makes him wonder whether it is possible to love two women at once; he had believed his heart was lost to Ragnheiður, the daughter of the wealthy merchant in the village to which he must now inexorably return. Set in the awe-inspiring wilderness of the extreme north, The Heart of Man is a profound exploration of life, love and desire, written with a sublime simplicity. In this conclusion to an audacious trilogy, Stefánsson brings a poet's eye and a philosopher's insight to a tale worthy of the sagasmiths of old.

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AN INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER AND WINNER OF THE ICELANDIC LITERATURE PRIZE"The Icelandic Dickens" Irish Examiner"Stefánsson shares the elemental grandeur of Cormac McCarthy" EILEEN BATTERSBY, T.L.S. Supplement"A wonderful, exceptional writer . . . A timeless storyteller" CARSTEN JENSEN"Sometimes, in small places, life becomes bigger" Sometimes a distance from the world's tumult opens our hearts and our dreams. In a village of four hundred souls, the infinite light of an Icelandic summer makes its inhabitants want to explore, and the eternal night of winter lights up the magic of the stars. The village becomes a microcosm of the age-old conflict between human desire and destiny, between the limits of reality and the wings of the imagination. With humour, with poetry, and with a tenderness for human weaknesses, Stefánsson explores the question of why we live at all.Translated from the Icelandic by Philip Roughton

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In a remote part of Iceland, a boy and his friend Barður join a boat to fish for cod. A winter storm surprises them out at sea and Barður, who has forgotten his waterproof as he was too absorbed in 'Paradise Lost', succumbs to the ferocious cold and dies. Appalled by the death and by the fishermen's callous ability to set about gutting the fatal catch, the boy leaves the village, intending to return the book to its owner. The extreme hardship and danger of the journey is of little consequence to him - he has already resolved to join his friend in death. But once in the town he immerses himself in the stories and lives of its inhabitants, and decides that he cannot be with his friend just yet. Set at the turn of the twentieth century, Heaven and Hell is a perfectly formed, vivid and timeless story, lyrical in style, and as intense a reading experience as the forces of the Icelandic landscape themselves. An outstandingly moving novel.

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