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ON TIME AND WATER longlisted for the NATIONAL TRANSLATION AWARD!

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On Time and Water coverWe’re thrilled to share that On Time and Water (March 30, 2021) by Andri Snær Magnason, translated from the Icelandic by Lytton Smith, was longlisted for the 2022 National Translation Award! Check out the full list of nominees here.

The NTA, which is administered by ALTA, is the only national award for translated fiction, poetry, and literary nonfiction that includes a rigorous examination of both the source text and its relation to the finished English work. Featuring authors writing in 14 different languages, this year’s longlists expand the prize’s dedication to literary diversity in English. The selection criteria include the quality of the finished English language book, and the quality of the translation. This year’s prose judges are Suzanne Jill Levine, Arunava Sinha, and Annie Tucker.

The winning translators will receive a $2,500 cash prize each. The awards will be announced at ALTA’s annual awards ceremony, which in 2022 will be held virtually. The awards ceremony will air on October 6, 2022 on ALTA’s Eventbrite page; this event is free and open to the public.

Order your copy of On Time and Water here!

ABOUT ON TIME AND WATER

Finalist for the 2021 Nordic Council Literature Prize • A Winnipeg Free Press Top Read of 2021

Asked by a leading climate scientist why he wasn’t writing about the greatest crisis mankind has faced, Andri Snær Magnason, one of Iceland’s most beloved writers and public intellectuals, protested: he wasn’t a specialist, he said. It wasn’t his field. But the scientist persisted: “If you cannot understand our scientific findings and present them in an emotional, psychological, poetic or mythological context,” he told him, “then no one will really understand the issue, and the world will end.”

Based on interviews and advice from leading glacial, ocean, climate, and geographical scientists, and interwoven with personal, historical, and mythological stories, Magnason’s resulting response is a rich and compelling work of narrative nonfiction that illustrates the reality of climate change and offers hope in the face of an uncertain future. Moving from reflections on how one writes an obituary for a glacier to exhortation for a heightened understanding of human time and our obligations to one another, throughout history and across the globe, On Time and Water is both deeply personal and globally minded: a travel story, a world history, a desperate plea to live in harmony with future generations—and is unlike anything that has yet been published on the current climate emergency.

ABOUT ANDRI SNÆR MAGNASON

Andri Snær Magnason is one of Iceland’s most celebrated writers. He has won the Icelandic Literary Prize for fiction, children’s fiction, and non-fiction. In 2009, Magnason co-directed the documentary Dreamland, which was based on his book Dreamland: A Self-Help Manual for a Frightened Nation. In 2010, Magnason was awarded the Kairos Prize, presented to outstanding individuals in the field of intercultural understanding. Magnason ran for president of Iceland in 2016 and came third out of nine candidates.

ABOUT LYTTON SMITH

Lytton Smith is a poet, professor, and translator from the Icelandic. His most recent translations include works by Kristin Ómarsdóttir, Jón Gnarr, Ófeigur Sigurðsson, and Guðbergur Bergsson. His most recent poetry collection, The All-Purpose Magical Tent, was published by Nightboat. Having earned his MFA and PhD from Columbia University, he currently teaches at SUNY Geneseo.

AS YOU WERE, ON DECLINE, THINGS ARE AGAINST US, THE SINGING FOREST, WHITE SHADOW, and ON TIME AND WATER: New Reviews!

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IN THE NEWS!

AS YOU WERE

Elaine Feeney’s As You Were (October 5, 2021) was featured in Nylon Magazine as one of “9 October 2021 Books to Kick Off Fall”! The list was published online on Friday, October 1. You can read it on their website here. 

Sophia June praised As You Were: 

“In a novel that paints a picture of modern Ireland that isn’t by Sally Rooney, women in an oncology ward come to terms with secrets, illnesses, and how to deal with their families through text and emoji-speak and existential humor. Perfect for Sad Girl Fall.”

An excerpt of As You Were was also published yesterday on October 4, in Lit Hub! You can read it on their website here.

Pick up your copy of As You Were here!

 

ON DECLINEOn Decline cover

Andrew Potter, author of On Decline (August 17, 2021) was interviewed for CBC Ideas with Nahlah Ayed. The episode was published online on September 29, and aired on CBC radio the same evening at 8PM ET. You can listen to the full interview here. 

Potter tells Ayed, 

“I think climate change is an effect of our civilization, but it becomes a problem when you lose the ability to do anything about it.”

Pick up your copy of On Decline here!

 

THINGS ARE AGAINST US

Lucy Ellmann, author of Things Are Against Us (September 28, 2021), was interviewed by Lit Hub! The interview was published on September 29. You can read it out on their website here.

Lucy Ellmann spoke about how men need to read women writers: 

“It’s time for men simply to listen to women. But apparently even educated men who read books do not read books by women: in other words, they have no respect for our point of view.”

Things Are Against Us was listed by Lit Hub as one of thirteen New & Noteworthy titles to check out this week! The list was published on September 29. You can read it on their website here. 

Lucy Ellmann’s new essay collection was listed by The Millions as a New & Noteworthy title! The list was published on September 28, and you can read it here. 

Lucy Ellmann was also interviewed by the Chicago Review of Books! The interview was published on October 1. You can read it out on their website here.

Interviewer Rachel León praised Things Are Against Us: 

“[Ellmann] delivers these diatribes with her signature wit and humor … Each essay is accompanied by an illustration by artist Diana Hope, which complements the colorful nature of this collection. Fans of Ellmann will likely delight in Things Are Against Us.”

And Things Are Against Us is a Toronto Public Library Fall 2021 Pick! It was included in “Valerie’s Picks”, published on September 20, and was featured on their Instagram on October 1. You can read the list on their website here. 

Librarian Valerie Casselman wrote,

“As you might expect, a collection of essays by the author of the prize-winning stream of consciousness novel Ducks, Newburyport will not be boring or stuffy. ‘Let’s complain,’ she says in the preface and then proceeds to do just that. A collection of satirical essays written with biting wit, irreverence, and clever wordplay.”

Pick up your copy of Things Are Against Us here!

 

THE SINGING FOREST

Judith McCormack’s The Singing Forest (September 21, 2021) was featured as an Editor’s Pick from 49th Shelf, as well as a “Valerie’s Pick for Fall 2021” at the Toronto Public Library! 

Check out the full list from 49th Shelf here. 

Check out the full list from the Toronto Public Library here.

Pick up your copy of The Singing Forest here!

 

On Time and Water coverON TIME AND WATER and WHITE SHADOW

Both Andri Snær Magnason’s On Time and Water (March 30, 2021) and Roy Jacobsen’s White Shadow (April 6, 2021) received excellent reviews in World Literature Today! Both reviews will be published in the Autumn 2021 issue and can be read on their website. 

You can read the On Time and Water review here, and the White Shadow review here.

Reviewer Greg Brown praised On Time and Water: 

“Andri Snær Magnason’s On Time and Water is a wondrous, rambling book. It confronts the ecological and social challenges facing humanity and eloquently presents facts that are dire and terrifying. And yet, through persuasive narratives and insightful examples, the book is satisfying, useful, and even hopeful to a degree. I highly recommend Magnason’s On Time and Water to readers of nonfiction, especially those interested in ecology and eco-theory … Magnason’s eloquence is exactly what is called for in this dire moment.”

Reviewer Thomas Nolden praised White Shadow: White Shadow cover

“With every sentence in his new novel, Roy Jacobsen shows how his characters carve their morality out of the dried driftwood found on the small islands of war-ravaged Norway. White Shadow is yet another masterpiece by Jacobsen, who continues in this short novel to track the vicissitudes of the life of his young heroine Ingrid Barrøy … White Shadow is a powerful psychological novel.”

Pick up your copy of On Time and Water here!

Pick up your copy of White Shadow here!

A GHOST IN THE THROAT, STRANGERS, DEBT, VILLA NEGATIVA, ON TIME AND WATER, SEA LOVES ME, DRIVEN: Latest News!

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We’ve gotten some fantastic coverage on a number of our titles here at Biblioasis in the last couple of weeks. Take a look at these reviews!

IN THE NEWS

Doireann Ní Ghríofa’s A Ghost in the Throat was highlighted in the New York Review of Books, and in a starred review by Foreword Reviews! You can read the New York Review of Books article here, and the Foreword Reviews article here.

New York Review of Books reviewer Ange Mlinko writes:

“Ní Ghríofa is a poet through and through: in this prose work she writes lyrical sentences that make the physical world come alive … It was around Ní Chonaill’s time that a new poetic form was invented: the aisling, a dream vision of Ireland revealing itself to the poet as a beautiful woman in need of saving. Ní Ghríofa certainly gives us a new, feminist vision of a woman saving another woman, righting a historical imbalance that persists in women’s continued sacrifices.”

Michelle Anne Schingler writes in Foreword Reviews:

“History mutes women; it also depends on them. This paradox is at the heart of a A Ghost in the Throat, an extraordinary literary memoir that finds life in buried spaces … Feminist and feminine, A Ghost in the Throat gives defiant voice to hushed womanhood, in all of its pain and glory. Her images incandescent and brutal, Ní Ghríofa writes about the omens represented by starlings and about unearthed fragments of teacups, but also about caesarean scars, bleeding hangnails, and the consuming fire of her husband’s touch … A Ghost in the Throat is an achingly gorgeous literary exploration that establishes a sisterhood across generations.”

Visit their websites for the full reviews!

Order your copy from Biblioasis, or your local bookstore.

 

Andri Snær Magnason’s On Time and Water, and Mia Couto’s Sea Loves Me were both featured in reviews by the Winnipeg Free Press! The piece on Magnason can be read here, and the one on Couto can be read here.

Of On Time and Water, reviewer Joseph Hnatiuk had this to say:

“Compelling … This clarion call to action on the climate issue, coming from award-winning Icelandic poet and novelist Andri Snær Magnason, should be required reading for deniers of the greatest crisis humans have ever faced … A memoir and polemic featuring mythological stories, Icelandic folklore, cultural histories and science-driven extrapolations which effectively combine to send a strong message about the planetary damage humans are causing.”

While Rory Runnells wrote about Sea Loves Me:

“Extraordinary … Begin anywhere, with any story, and you as reader are safe within Couto’s world. The imagination is without limit, the poetic force is exhilarating and often disturbing, while the surprise of some is breathtaking … Couto is as much a master of the pointed anecdote as the longer tale.”

Check out the Winnipeg Free Press website for the full reviews.

Purchase your copy of On Time and Water from Biblioasis, or your local bookstore!

Order Sea Loves Me today from Biblioasis, or your local bookstore!

 

Strangers by Rob Taylor, Villa Negativa by Sharon McCartney, and The Debt by Andreae Callanan were all featured on CBC’s 55 Canadian poetry collections to check out in spring 2021 list! For a look at our poetry collections and more, check out the full list here.

Order your copy of Strangers at Biblioasis

Order your copy of Villa Negativa at Biblioasis

Order your copy of The Debt at Biblioasis, or your local bookstore!

 

And just last week, Marcello Di Cintio’s Driven was given a glowing shout-out on twitter by none other than Margaret Atwood!

Atwood wrote:

“An astonishing book about folks from all over, many of whom have been through total hell but have somehow made their way out … You never know who’s driving you. Each person contains multitudes.”

Purchase your copy of Driven at Biblioasis, or your local bookstore!

ON TIME AND WATER Virtual Launch Video

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Last night we celebrated the launch of  Andri Snær Magnason’s new book, On Time and Water! Andri Snær Magnason was joined virtually by Meehan Crist and Lytton Smith in a great discussion. The event then moved on to an exciting audience Q&A and book giveaway! Biblioasis was thrilled to partner with the US publisher Open Letter Books for the launch, which was co-hosted by Glass Bookshop in Edmonton, AB.

If you missed the event, don’t worry—you can still watch it below!

Order your copy from Biblioasis in Canada.

Order your copy from Open Letter Books in the US.

Or, you can pick up a copy from your local bookstore!

 

ABOUT ON TIME AND WATER

Asked by a leading climate scientist why he wasn’t writing about the greatest crisis mankind has faced, Andri Snær Magnason, one of Iceland’s most beloved writers and public intellectuals, protested: he wasn’t a specialist, he said. It wasn’t his field. But the scientist persisted: “If you cannot understand our scientific findings and present them in an emotional, psychological, poetic or mythological context,” he told him, “then no one will really understand the issue, and the world will end.”

Based on interviews and advice from leading glacial, ocean, climate, and geographical scientists, and interwoven with personal, historical, and mythological stories, Magnason’s resulting response is a rich and compelling work of narrative nonfiction that illustrates the reality of climate change and offers hope in the face of an uncertain future. Moving from reflections on how one writes an obituary for a glacier to exhortation for a heightened understanding of human time and our obligations to one another, throughout history and across the globe, On Time and Water is both deeply personal and globally minded: a travel story, a world history, a desperate plea to live in harmony with future generations—and is unlike anything that has yet been published on the current climate emergency.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Andri Snær Magnason is one of Iceland’s most celebrated writers. He has won the Icelandic Literary Prize for fiction, children’s fiction, and non-fiction. In 2009, Magnason co-directed the documentary Dreamland, which was based on his book Dreamland: A Self-Help Manual for a Frightened Nation. In 2010, Magnason was awarded the Kairos Prize, presented to outstanding individuals in the field of intercultural understanding. Magnason ran for president of Iceland in 2016 and came third out of nine candidates.