SEPTEMBER 2021 - AudioFile
Narrator Ulf Bjorklund takes listeners on a leisurely stroll through a small Icelandic town. The performance is composed of several short stories featuring various townsfolk that give listeners windows into each of their lives. From the neighborhood gossipers to pensive resident scientists to nosy postmen, every relationship is intimately performed, and discovering the connections from one story to the next creates a complete vision of the community. Every chapter is narrated so poetically that listeners will be left wanting more. This unforgettable performance captures both the looming death and the charm of this small town. G.M. Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award © AudioFile 2021, Portland, Maine
Publishers Weekly
07/19/2021
Stefánsson (Fish Have No Feet) delivers a delightfully dishy look at a small Icelandic village in the 1990s. A first-person-plural narration ties things together: “We’re not going to tell you about the whole village.... You would find that intolerable. But we’ll definitely be telling you about the lust that binds together days and nights.” The director of the village’s primary employer, the Knitting Company, began dreaming in Latin many years earlier, prompting him to collect rare books and deliver lectures to the community, earning him the name “the Astronomer.” The Astronomer’s son, Davíð, works with the hefty Kjartan at the village depot, which may be haunted by the ghosts of murdered lovers from the 1800s. Kjartan, though married with children, falls for neighboring farmer Kristín. Elísabet, an employee at the Knitting Company, opens a restaurant, much to the ire of the village’s unemployed women, who claim she was unfairly advantaged. Throughout, the group focus turns from one resident to the next. There’s no overarching narrative, but it adds up to an immersive and funny portrait of a community whose members squabble and celebrate in equal measure. Readers will be hooked by the mishmash of neighborhood gossip. Agent: Monica Gram, Copenhagen Literary Agency. (Sept.)
From the Publisher
"Stefánsson's immersive prose swells, thunders and sparkles with all the shifting moods of the of the sea on an Icelandic summer’s day.” — The Independent (UK)
"Powerful and sparkling. . . . Prize-winning translator Philip Roughton's feather-light touch brings out the gleaming, fairy-tale quality of the writing." — Irish Times
"The Icelandic Dickens...He has the same gift of writing with great understanding, an empathy with troubled souls and a skill at laugh-out-loud comedy." — Irish Examiner
"Stefánsson shares the elemental grandeur of Cormac McCarthy." — Times Literary Supplement (London)
"A wonderful, exceptional writer. . . . A timeless storyteller." — Carsten Jensen
"Jón Kalman Stefánsson's lyrical style has earned him a dedicated following of readers in Iceland. [In] Summer Light and Then Comes the Night each standalone story describes life in a small village in West Iceland, normal people—their insecurities and anxieties, their courage and loneliness. Together, these episodes create one, coherent whole; there’s no set narrator, but rather, it’s the village that tells these stories of hope, cruelty, life, and death." — Literary Hub
"Stefánsson is a superb storyteller with a metaphysical bent. He draws characters with empathy and wit, and frames their condition in existential dichotomies: modernity versus the past, mystical versus rational, destiny versus coincidence." — Booklist
"Stefánsson's prose rolls and surges with oceanic splendor." — The Spectator
"An immersive and funny portrait of a community whose members squabble and celebrate in equal measure." — Publishers Weekly
"Wistful and whimsical....[Stefánsson's] writing is fertile, yielding extraordinary imagery. There are many tears in these stories and in this village, but there is also hope, because even unfulfilled dreams offer guidance, 'they evaporate and settle like dew in the sky, where they transform into the stars in the night.'" — Minneapolis Star Tribune
The Spectator
"Stefánsson's prose rolls and surges with oceanic splendor."
Irish Examiner
"The Icelandic Dickens...He has the same gift of writing with great understanding, an empathy with troubled souls and a skill at laugh-out-loud comedy."
Irish Times
"Powerful and sparkling. . . . Prize-winning translator Philip Roughton's feather-light touch brings out the gleaming, fairy-tale quality of the writing."
Carsten Jensen
"A wonderful, exceptional writer. . . . A timeless storyteller."
The Independent (UK)
"Stefánsson's immersive prose swells, thunders and sparkles with all the shifting moods of the of the sea on an Icelandic summer’s day.
Literary Hub
"Jón Kalman Stefánsson's lyrical style has earned him a dedicated following of readers in Iceland. [In] Summer Light and Then Comes the Night each standalone story describes life in a small village in West Iceland, normal people—their insecurities and anxieties, their courage and loneliness. Together, these episodes create one, coherent whole; there’s no set narrator, but rather, it’s the village that tells these stories of hope, cruelty, life, and death."
Booklist
"Stefánsson is a superb storyteller with a metaphysical bent. He draws characters with empathy and wit, and frames their condition in existential dichotomies: modernity versus the past, mystical versus rational, destiny versus coincidence."
Times Literary Supplement (London)
"Stefánsson shares the elemental grandeur of Cormac McCarthy."
Minneapolis Star Tribune
"Wistful and whimsical....[Stefánsson's] writing is fertile, yielding extraordinary imagery. There are many tears in these stories and in this village, but there is also hope, because even unfulfilled dreams offer guidance, 'they evaporate and settle like dew in the sky, where they transform into the stars in the night.'"
Booklist
"Stefánsson is a superb storyteller with a metaphysical bent. He draws characters with empathy and wit, and frames their condition in existential dichotomies: modernity versus the past, mystical versus rational, destiny versus coincidence."
SEPTEMBER 2021 - AudioFile
Narrator Ulf Bjorklund takes listeners on a leisurely stroll through a small Icelandic town. The performance is composed of several short stories featuring various townsfolk that give listeners windows into each of their lives. From the neighborhood gossipers to pensive resident scientists to nosy postmen, every relationship is intimately performed, and discovering the connections from one story to the next creates a complete vision of the community. Every chapter is narrated so poetically that listeners will be left wanting more. This unforgettable performance captures both the looming death and the charm of this small town. G.M. Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award © AudioFile 2021, Portland, Maine
