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Showing posts with the label Location: Lithuania

Buchmesse challenge review for March: The Ambassador by Bragi Ólafsson

Icelandic title: Sendiherrann, ljóð í óbundnu máli German title: Der Botschafter (2009) Danish title: Ambassadøren (2008) Genre: Literary fiction Year of publication: 2006 Setting & time: Iceland Lithuania; contemporary Bragi Ólafsson is an Icelandic poet, playwright and novelist (and former member of the band The Sugarcubes ). This novel was nominated for the Icelandic Literary Prize and the Nordic Council's Literature Prize in 2006. It was published in English in 2010. The novel tells the story of Sturla Jón Jónsson, a middle-aged Icelandic poet who has just published what he intends to be his last book of poems. He is on his way to a poetry festival in Lithuania when the story begins. Once he is there trouble starts piling up, starting with a man back home in Iceland who accuses him of plagiarism and escalating from there. This novel is full of very subtle humour and observations of Icelandic society and Icelanders, and specifically of what it‘s like to be a...