About the Author

Born in Reykjavik in 1962, Sjon is the author of the novels The Blue Fox, The Whispering Muse, From the Mouth of the Whale, Moonstone, CoDex 1962 and Red Milk, for which he has won several prizes including the Nordic Council's Literature Prize and the Icelandic Literary Prize. He has also been shortlisted for the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award and the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize, and his work has been translated into thirty-five languages.In addition, Sjon has written nine poetry collections as well as four opera librettos and lyrics for various artists. He was nominated for an Oscar for his lyrics in the film Dancer in the Dark. In 2017, Sjon became the third writer - following Margaret Atwood and David Mitchell - to contribute to Future Library, a public artwork based in Norway spanning a hundred years.Sjon lives in Reykjavik, Iceland.Victoria Cribb has translated more than twenty-five books by Icelandic authors. Her translation of Moonstone was longlisted for the Best Translated Book Award and the PEN America Translation Prize in 2016. In 2017 she received the Ordstir honorary translation award for services to Icelandic literature.

Reviews

Every now and then a writer changes the whole map of literature inside my head. The most recent has been the Icelander Sjon, whose work is unlike anything I had read, and very exciting ... I think of Icelanders as erudite, singular, tough, and uncompromising. Sjon is all these things, but he is also quicksilver, playful and surreal ... [Sjon] has changed the way I see things. - A.S. Byatt, The New York Review of BooksSjon is the trickster that makes the world; and he is achingly brilliant... strange and wonderful, an epic made mad, made extraordinary. - Junot DiazHallucinatory, lyrical and by turn comic and tragic-an extraordinary novel. - Hari KunzruKaleidoscopic and mesmerizing, comic and poignant - Times Literary SupplementSjon's novels are brilliant collisions of history and fable, psychology and fantasy - Chris Power, GuardianWildly comic and incandescent, elegant and brittle. - Keith Donohue, Washington Post