Vetrarsól (“Winter Sun”), a novel by Audur Jónsdóttir from 2008, has just been released in Germany as Jenseits des Meeres liegt die ganze Welt in the translation of Kristof Magnusson. It was praised in Der Spiegel.
The magazine’s literary critic, Gabriela Sedel-Hollaender, writes that Vetrarsól is a cleverly written, exciting and moving book, adding that it encourages people to travel to Iceland, a press release states.
Meanwhile, the Danish publisher Vandkunsten has bought the publication rights to the poetry book Blódhófnir (“Blood Hoof”) by Gerdur Kristný, which earned the Icelandic Literature Award in the fiction category in 2010.
Gerdur Kristný.
Vandkunsten is also planning the release of the author’s children’s book Gardurinn (“The Garden”; 2008), which received the West Nordic Children’s Book Award in 2010.
The publication rights to the book have also been sold to Norway and Germany and the Icelandic film producer Pegasus has secured the movie rights to it.
Gerdur Kristný has just returned from Copenhagen where she attended a poetry festival and she will also be involved in poetry readings in Germany, Norway, Wales and China, among other countries, this year.
In other literature news, a new book by Einar Már Gudmundsson, Bankastraeti núll, has just been released on the Icelandic market.
It has the subtitle “stories from reality” and features the mixture of national life and culture, not unlike the author’s approach in Hvíta bókin (“The White Book”) in 2009.
None of these books have been published in English.
