Hallgrimur Helgason is an Icelandic artist and writer born in Reykjavik in 1959. He started out as a painter but then also took up writing. Since 1990 he has published eleven novels, the most well-known being 101 Reykjavik, which was turned into a popular film, The Hitman’s Guide to Housecleaning, and The Woman at 1000°. Helgason has also published 4 books of poetry and is an active political columnist. His books have been translated into 14 languages and three of them have been nominated for the Nordic Prize of Literature. Helgason won the Icelandic Literature Prize three times. In 2020 he was awarded the French medal Officier de l’ordre des arts et des lettres.
In early 2016 I stayed in Kochi, Kerala, in the south of India, working on a novel. There I came across the local bestseller Goat Days by the Bharein-based Indian author, Benyamin, and was totally blown away. It's a powerful tale of a young Indian worker named Najeeb Muhammad, who, like many of his countrymen, goes to work in Saudi Arabia, dreaming of earning some money for his family back home. His dream turns into a nightmare when he is taken as a slave to a remote desert farm where he has to take care of the goats and dwell among them. He is forced to live alone in the desert with all its hardships, sandstorms, heat, and general dryness, treated like an animal by his Saudi master. Still, hope prevails. This is one of the ultimate "me-against-the-world" books. Its strength is underlined by the fact that it's banned in the Emirates and Saudi Arabia.
In the southern Indian state of Kerala, Najeeb's dearest wish is to work in a Persian Gulf country and earn enough money to send some back home. One day, he finally achieves this dream, only to be propelled by a series of incidents grim and absurd into a slave-like existence, herding goats in the middle of the Saudi desert. Memories of his loving family and of the lush, verdant landscape of his village haunt Najeeb, whose only solace is the companionship of goats. In the end, the lonely young man is forced to contrive a hazardous scheme to escape his…
The great Chinese British powerhouse writes about her childhood in a poor coastal village in post-Mao’s China where she’s made to live with her grandparents and life is rough and hard, especially for a girl. It’s a very atmospheric tale, that paints a vivid picture of this incredible society. It’s also a Cinderella story, about a suffering child that, thanks to incredible stubbornness and stamina, rises up to become one of the twelve (out of a million or so) applicants that are accepted into the Chinese Film School in Beijing each year. She later moves to England and her descriptions of the west are super fresh and priceless.
Xiaolu Guo meets her parents for the first time when she is almost seven. They are strangers to her.
When she is born her parents hand her over to a childless peasant couple in the mountains. Aged two, and suffering from malnutrition on a diet of yam leaves, they leave Xiaolu with her illiterate grandparents in a fishing village on the East China Sea. It's a strange beginning.
A Wild Swans for a new generation, Once Upon a Time in the East takes Xiaolu from a run-down shack to film school in a rapidly changing Beijing, navigating the everyday peculiarity…
A feministic milestone, a must-read for all activists and people engaged in the battle for a better society. It tells the story of Firdaus, a young woman coming of age in the male-dominant Egyptian society, who never eyes an escape from the hardships and trials imposed on her by senseless men. It’s such a strong description of women as an underclass, as slaves in a male dominant society, that it changes your basic outlook on life. “Every single man I did get to know filled me with but one desire: to lift my hand and bring it smashing down on his face.” – Firdaus
'An unforgettable, unmissable book for the new global feminist.' The Times
'All the men I did get to know filled me with but one desire: to lift my hand and bring it smashing down on his face.'
So begins Firdaus's remarkable story of rebellion against a society founded on lies, hypocrisy, brutality and oppression. Born to a peasant family in the Egyptian countryside, Firdaus struggles through childhood, seeking compassion and knowledge in a world which gives her little of either. As she grows up and escapes the fetters of her childhood, each new relationship teaches her a bitter but liberating…
Germans have been in love with Italy since always, a love that found its culmination with Goethe’s famous Italienische Reise in 1816. It’s a love that lasts forever, for it’s a love that never finds fulfillment. Germans are like the stuffed up straight guy who’s in love with a lively beauty above their level, that is Italy; they’re forever stuck in the moment of enchantment, they can never grasp or really fathom their love, let alone turn it into a real affair or just begin to understand this incredible woman. Promising young German writer Strauss takes up residence in the famous Via Corso in Rome (close to Casa di Goethe), and tries to make his moment come alive under the heavy burden of history. Maybe not as urgent or dramatic as the other four books, but still here we have a one man-boy against all of Rome, all of our western cultural tradition.
Ein Sommer in Rom Ein junger Mann kommt in die ewige Stadt, um die Gegenwart abzuschtteln. Er sucht einen eigenen Weg, fhlt fremde Zeiten in sich leben. In Rom erinnert er sich. In Rom verliebt er sich. In Rom trauert er. Er trifft auf auergewhnliche Menschen und findet seine Aufgabe: Alles wahrnehmen, nichts auslassen. Rmische Tage fhrt zu den vielen Anfngen und Enden unserer Welt und fragt, was wir morgen daraus machen. Der Erzhler zieht in eine Wohnung schrg gegenber der Casa di Goethe und die Stadt wird ihm zur Geliebten. Ihre Geschichten spielen vor seinem Auge: Der Mord an…
The quintessential me-against-the-world book, the model that all later attempts are measured against. Knut Hamsun’s description of himself as a hunger-stricken artist in 1890’s Christiania (modern day’s Oslo) manages to create such reading hunger in the reader that he will almost refer to this book as his first real meal. The prose is simply electric. Imagine incredible Norway at around 1900 when this small nation could pride itself of four world-class artists: Henrik Ibsen (born 1828), Edvard Grieg (born 1843), Edvard Munch (born 1863), and Knut Hamsun (born 1859).
One of the most important and controversial writers of the 20th century, Knut Hamsun made literary history with the publication in 1890 of this powerful, autobiographical novel recounting the abject poverty, hunger and despair of a young writer struggling to achieve self-discovery and its ultimate artistic expression. The book brilliantly probes the psychodynamics of alienation and obsession, painting an unforgettable portrait of a man driven by forces beyond his control to the edge of self-destruction. Hamsun influenced many of the major 20th-century writers who followed him, including Kafka, Joyce and Henry Miller. Required reading in world literature courses, the highly…
A comic thriller of mistaken identities. A master of violence is forced to hide in the most peaceful country on the planet, that also happens to be its most egalitarian society — a good challenge to his ideas about women.
Toxic is a professional hitman for the Croatian Mafia in New York. One day he is forced to flee the States, but at JFK he spots the FBI waiting for him at the gate. He turns and hides in the men's room, contemplating his moves, when out from one of the stalls comes another bald guy. Being a pro, Toxic kills the bald man, takes on his clothes, ID, passport, and air ticket. So the Croatian hitman arrives in Reykjavik, disguised as a TV preacher.
Tap Dancing on Everest, part coming-of-age memoir, part true-survival adventure story, is about a young medical student, the daughter of a Holocaust survivor raised in N.Y.C., who battles self-doubt to serve as the doctor—and only woman—on a remote Everest climb in Tibet.
The team attempts a new route up the East Face without the use of supplemental oxygen, Sherpa support, or chance for rescue. When three climbers disappear during their summit attempt, Zieman reaches the knife edge of her limits and digs deeply to fight for the climbers’ lives and to find her voice.
The plan was outrageous: A small team of four climbers would attempt a new route on the East Face of Mt. Everest, considered the most remote and dangerous side of the mountain, which had only been successfully climbed once before. Unlike the first large team, Mimi Zieman and her team would climb without using supplemental oxygen or porter support. While the unpredictable weather and high altitude of 29,035 feet make climbing Everest perilous in any condition, attempting a new route, with no idea of what obstacles lay ahead, was especially audacious. Team members were expected to push themselves to their…
