On Time and Water

By Andri Snaer Magnason, Lytton Smith (translator),

Book cover of On Time and Water

Book description

A few years ago, Andri Snaer Magnason, one of Iceland’s most beloved writers and public intellectuals, was asked by a leading climate scientist why he wasn’t writing about the greatest crisis mankind has faced. Magnason demurred: he wasn’t a specialist, he said; it wasn’t his field. But the scientist persisted:…

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Why read it?

1 author picked On Time and Water as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?

My friend, the author, stood to be President. He didn't get in. But he was instead asked to write an elegy for a glacier,the first to disappear in Iceland. It gleamed white as marble, now the cone volcano is only ash and lava. Andri wrote, "How do you say goodbye to a glacier?" Words now fail us, and this in a country with a famed body of sagas written 1000 years ago.

This is a gorgeous book about large and long time, and our small lives, about agency and creating new mythologies. We may find stories where the "ever after"…

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