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by Jón Kalman Stefánsson (Author), Philip Roughton (Translator)
The final installment of Jón Kalman Stefánsson's Trilogy About the Boy is a profound exploration of life, love and desire written with a sublime simplicity.
After coming through the blizzard that almost cost them everything, the postman Jens and the boy rest in a fishing community at the edge of the world to recover from their ordeal before returning once again to their village. But the northern summers are short and the sea is always present, and fish remain more valuable than men. And the chorus of drowned fisherfolk whisper tales full of silver, regret, smiles, and cruelty, in the hope that hidden within such stories are words that will free us from this tug of war between Heaven and Hell.
Set in the awe-inspiring wilderness of the north of Iceland, The Heart of Man concludes a modern Icelandic saga about a boy and the community of the living and dead who congregate around him, offering a profound exploration of life, love, and desire.
Author Biography
Jón Kalman Stefánsson's novels have been nominated three times for the Nordic Council Prize for Literature and his novel Summer Light, and then Comes the Night received the Icelandic Prize for Literature in 2005. In 2011 he was awarded the prestigious P. O. Enquist Award. His books include Heaven and Hell; The Sorrow of Angels, longlisted for the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize; The Heart of Man, winner of the Oxford-Weidenfeld Translation Prize; and Fish Have No Feet, which was longlisted for the Man Booker International Prize. He lives in Reykjavík, Iceland.
Philip Roughton is a scholar of Old Norse and medieval literature and an award-winning translator of Icelandic literature, having translated works by numerous writers including Halldór Laxness. He was the winner of the Oxford-Weidenfeld Prize for his translation of Jón Kalman Stefánsson's The Heart of Man, and shortlisted for the same prize for About the Size of the Universe.
