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Chargement... Out of the Blue: New Short Fiction from Icelandpar Helen Mitsios (Directeur de publication)
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This extraordinary collection, the first anthology of Icelandic short fiction published in English translation, features work by twenty of Iceland's most popular and celebrated living authors--including Andri Snær Magnason, Jón Kalman Stefánsson, Kristín Ómarsdóttir, and Auður Jónsdóttir--granddaughter of Halldór Laxness, who won the 1955 Nobel Prize in Literature. Celebrated in Europe and Scandinavia but less known in the English-speaking world, these writers traverse realms of darkness and light that will be familiar to readers who have fallen under the spell of Scandinavian fiction. While uniquely Icelandic in topography and tenor, with a touch of the island's supernatural charm, the stories traffic in the enduring and universal complexities of human nature. Here is a fictional universe where the ghosts of Vikings and spirits tread, volcanoes grumble underfoot, and writers trip the Northern Lights fantastic across the landscape of the Icelandic imagination. At long last, readers can enjoy award-winning stories now expertly rendered into English by the country's most renowned translators. In "Killer Whale" a father contemplates euthanasia for a terminally ill child, in "Self Portrait" a vacationing family in Spain crosses paths with migrants, in "Escape for Men" a woman searches for an ex-lover in the South of France, and in "The Most Precious Secret" the nature of artists and the art world is mercilessly revealed. Both the Viking myths of Iceland's forefathers and the cutting-edge modern world of the country today are brilliantly alive in these remarkable and original stories. This collection is an excursion to an island where almost two million travelers descend yearly on a population of 345 thousand natives. Iceland is the place Bj{uml}ork calls home, the location where Game of Thrones was filmed--a place with open lava fields, glaciers, and iceberg lagoons among other natural wonders that is becoming one of the "hottest" tourist destinations on earth. Out of the Blue transports readers to Iceland's timeless and magical island of Vikings and geographical wonders, and it promises to be a seminal collection that will define Icelandic literature in translation for decades to come. Aucune description trouvée dans une bibliothèque |
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Google Books — Chargement... GenresClassification décimale de Melvil (CDD)839.6935Literature German literature and literatures of related languages Other Germanic literatures Old Norse, Old Icelandic, Icelandic, Faroese literatures Modern West Scandinavian; Modern Icelandic Modern Icelandic fiction 21st CenturyClassification de la Bibliothèque du CongrèsÉvaluationMoyenne:
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In the introduction to Out of the Blue it states that “Icelanders read and write more books per person than do inhabitants of any other country.” Impressive remark and certainly an attention-grabber for somebody like me. Always on the lookout for literary types I feel somewhat banished to the wilderness of my own locale. Living now in Florida, though tropical, and the outlandish opposite of Iceland, I am drawn to these people who use stories to shape get-togethers as much as we might use music to dance to. These thoughts of mine added to the excitement of discovering more Ingmar Bergman types or a possible sighting of Godot making hay on the horizon. But instead I am disappointed. For the most part these tales bore me. An occasional work of interest would reveal itself from time to time, but usually the story was too simply put, straightforward and predictable. The harshness and severity of the landscape and climate felt absent from the literature. But I read on not knowing what to expect and minus any preconceived ideas I might have had when I first began this project. It made me feel bad that this collection was letting me down, and I wished almost desperately for it to be otherwise. Only a quarter of the way through and I was already feeling disheartened and threatening myself with the urge to quit.
The first story to actually grab my attention was titled Killer Whale. The writer Gunnarsson adroitly expressed a father’s death wish resolve which heartened me and furthered my interest in plodding on into additional collected texts. But they continued to fail me. Each further entry devolved in more of the same. For a country so involved in literary matters I expected a more skilled and serious effort. The darkness I had been expecting, and openly wishing for, eluded the text. There were no budding Becketts nor Ingmar Bergmans in their midst. I flipped through the pages front to back and begged for a sentence to strike me as profound or disturbing. But it never happened. And so quit my charge. ( )