Description
“Stefánsson shares the elemental grandeur of Cormac McCarthy.”—Eileen Battersby, TLS
In a remote part of Iceland, a young man joins a cod-fishing crew, but when a tragedy occurs at sea, he’s appalled by his fellow fishermen’s cruel indifference. Lost, broken by his experiences, he leaves the settlement in secret, his only purpose to return a book to a blind old sea captain who lives in a town beyond the mountains—and when he arrives, he finds that he isn’t alone in his solitude: welcomed into a warm circle of outcasts, he begins to see the world anew.
Heaven and Hell navigates the depths of despair to celebrate the redemptive power of friendship. Set at the turn of the twentieth century, it is a reading experience as intense as the forces of the Icelandic landscape themselves.
Praise for Heaven and Hell
“A moving story of loss and courage told in prose as crisp and clear as the Icelandic landscape where it takes place . . . Stefánsson writes like an epic poet of old about the price the natural world exacts on humans, but he’s not without sympathy or an ability to find affirming qualities in difficult situations.”
—Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
“With exquisite language, allegory, and an intense sense of place, the comparison to Cormac McCarthy is entirely appropriate.”
—Mary Wahlmeier Bracciano, The Raven Bookstore (Lawrence, KS)
“I’m still feeling the chills from Stefánsson’s description of cod fishing in a rowboat on the stormy open seas. An excellent author.”
—Todd Miller, Arcadia Books (Spring Green, WI)
Praise for Your Absence is Darkness
“Comparisons do not do justice to the complexity of Stefánsson’s book, nor the uniqueness of his prose, rendered here in a tumblingly beautiful translation by Philip Roughton.”
—Daniel Mason, New York Times
“Stefansson uses the drama and comedy of everyday lives to dive into a broad range of topics: philosophy, music, faith, and even the science of earthworms.”
—New York Times
“Like fellow Scandinavian authors Jon Fosse and Karl Ove Knausgaard, Mr. Stefánsson joins plainspoken depictions of daily life to intimations of mysticism, creating a spectral, haunted atmosphere . . . Questioning, vulnerable and openly sentimental, this is an absorbing commemoration of what the author calls the paradox that rules our existence, the vivifying joy and paralyzing sorrow of loving another person.”
—Sam Sacks, Wall Street Journal
“I couldn’t put it down.”
—Washington Post
“What makes this so irresistible is the narrator’s constant optimism as he probes profound questions from within the murk of his consciousness (‘Give me darkness, and then I’ll know where the light is’). Stefánsson is poised to make his mark on the world stage.”
—Publishers Weekly (starred review)
