Hlynur Bjorn is an unemployed 30-something loner, still living with his mum, who spends his days on the Internet, watching satellite TV, and gazing at girls in the pub. But Hlynur’s cosy, unthreatening world is shaken when his mother comes out as a lesbian, and her Spanish girlfriend Lolla moves into their home. 101 Reykjavik is a first-person account of a blackly funny and bizarre love triangle, a dark, comic tale of perverse sexuality and slacker culture in Iceland’s trendy capital city that pokes fun along the way at such foibles of our culture as CNN weather reports and porn videos.

The book was turned into a successful movie in the year 2000, directed by Baltasar Kormakur and starring Hilmir Snaer Gudnason and Victoria Abril.

• Nominated for the Nordic Council Literature Prize 1999

“… deeply entertaining … side-splittingly funny. You have to read it. … He has done the best thing possible: found a new way of telling.”
THE GUARDIAN

“Bukowski of the north.”
LA REPUBLICA

“The man can wail like some young Arctic Philip Roth.”
NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW

“Imagine if Henry Miller had written Tropic of Cancer on crack instead of wine.”
TIM SANDLIN, AMERICAN NOVELIST

“101 Reykjavik is a realistic novel in which the existential problems of modern man are depicted with Hamlet as a model.”
NORDIC LITERATURE 2001

“The main character is the everlasting partyanimal, as are Nick Hornby’s characters and the world described in the book … reminds of Irvine Welsh and his Trainspotting.”
TURUN PÄIVÄLEHTI, FINLAND

“You will read the book non-stop, not least because of its amusingly conceived leitmotifs …”
VENERDI, SUPPLEMENT TO LA REPUBLICA

“A superbly unique gem amongst the modern canon of Icelandic books.”
WILL HEATH, BOOKSANDBAO.COM

“The most irritating thing about the Icelander Hallgrimur Helgason’s novel 101 Reykjavik is that it is so damned well written.”
SYDSVENSKA DAGBLADET, SWEDEN