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Höfundur Íslands
The Author of Iceland is Hallgrimur’s most ambitious work to date. A famous Icelandic writer dies at the age of 82 and wakes up in a novel he wrote 50 years earlier. Here the saying “the author lives in his work” is put to practice. Einar J. Grímsson spends his afterlife stuck inside his own world of fiction; the novel about the balky farmer Hrolfur of Helldale and his victimized family. Living among his own characters soon becomes the writer’s nightmare, of course. The German title of the novel is Vom zweifelhaften Vergnügen, tot zu sein (About the Doubtful Pleasure of Being Dead).
A long and complex novel, The Author of Iceland could be described as being three books in one: A) The story of a writer waking up inside his novel. B) The writer’s life story. C) The novel within the novel.
The Author of Iceland was started in Oslo and Grimstad in the fall of 1999 and resumed in Hrisey, Iceland in the summer of 2000. It was finished in Reykjavik in 2001.
The main character, Grímsson, is loosely based on Icelandic Nobel prize winner Halldor Laxness (1902-1998) and the novel in question is inspired by his famous Independent People. This fact caused quite a stir when the book was published in Iceland, Laxness being the sacred icon of Icelandic culture. Most of the debate centered around the fact that the author admits having been a Stalinist, a touchy subject in Laxness’s life. The “succès de scandale” resulted in good sales and “Höfundur Íslands” became Hallgrimur’s best selling book. It was awarded the Iceland Literature Prize in 2001 and has been published in Italy, Finland, Norway, Denmark and Germany.
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