Evil is a clear conversation with the present.
It touches on an uncomfortable truth about ourselves.

The momentum of world history: Agnes Lukauskas and Omar Arnarson meet early one piercingcold Sunday morning in the taxi queue in the centre of Reykjavik. Three years later Omar burns their house to the ground, drives to Keflavik, and abandons the country by plane.

The story actually begins long before then, in the summer of 1941, when half of the residents of the small Lithuanian town of Jurbarkas are slaughtered in the surrounding forest. Two of Agnes’ great-grandfathers were in the massacre – one shot the other – and three generations later Agnes has made the holocaust the centre point of her own life.vHer obsession leads her to Arnor, a literate Neo-Nazi.

Evil is about the holocaust and about love, about Iceland and Lithuania, about Agnes who becomes lost in herself while the Icelandic ambassador in Lithuania acknowledges the independence of the Baltic countries and Lithuanian criminals begin operating from Reykjavik, about Agnes who doesn’t know whether she is a fan of the BRanking World Champions in Handball or of Bogdan Kowalczyk, about Agnes who loves Omar who loves Agnes who loves Arnor.

• The Icelandic Literary Prize 2012
• The Icelandic Bookseller Prize for the best novel of 2012
• Nominated for the Nordic Council Literature Prize 2013
• Prix Transfuge du meilleur roman Scandinave
• Shortlisted for the Prix Médicis étranger 2015
• Nominated for the Prix du meilleur roman étranger 2015
• Nominated for the Prix Médicis étranger 2015

“A very, very important author has emerged.”
LIVRES HEBDO, FRANCE

“Norddahl is a virtuoso.”
MARIE CLAIRE, FRANCE

 “Evil is a marvellous novel. … There are countless ways to address the present and mourn the past, but the way in which Evil does so completely unnerved me. … What will become of the modern novel now, following this book?  Evil is a novel that is truly one of a kind. It is the modern novel. … It is as tremendous as the works of Sofi Oksanen. … Evil is a unique novel.”
ELISABETH HJORTH, SVENSKA DAGBLADET, SWEDEN

“Take My Struggle 6 by Karl Ove Knausgårds along with Purge by Sofi Oksanen, add Reykjavík and you get Evil.”
BO BJÖRNVIG, WEEKENDAVISEN, DENMARK

“Eirikur Orn Norddahl has written a cruel, sometimes cruelly funny book about how ideology and history permeates our most intimate spheres. Evil.”
SPIEGEL ONLINE, GERMANY

(5 stars out of 5) “So masterfully done, original and cool that it’s frightening … Crazy book! Read it! … Informative, entertaining, sad and funny. It combines history, love story, philosophical pondering and humour … ”
THORUNN HREFNA SIGURJONSDOTTIR, FRETTABLADID DAILY

“The best book of the year.”
ATHENS VOICE, GREECE

“One of the strongest messages of the book is that to let oneself be passively borne with the currents, to perpetually shy away from confrontation or to stand as a transfixed onlooker can also constitute violence against others. … This love story from modern-day Reykjavik is used to lead us through that part of Europe’s past that we find most difficult to address.”
AUDUR ADALSTEINSDOTTIR AND ASTA GISLADOTTIR, SPASSIAN

“A major work in every sense … very strong impact … masterly well written … kept me in its grip …”
FRIDRIKA BENONYSDOTTIR, KILJAN/ICELANDIC NATIONAL BROADCASTING SERVICE

“Smashing … Really great book any way you look at it … magnificent work … constant tension … ”
EGILL HELGASON, KILJAN/ICELANDIC NATIONAL BROADCASTING SERVICE

“The story told in Evil is as extensive as a Thomas Mann novel, and has the same kind of epic progression. … I have only the highest praise for this novel with its unbridled, yet clear, structure. I am whole-heartedly impressed by it.”
THOMAS THURAH, INFORMATION, DENMARK

“When Eirikur Orn Norddahl writes a novel, you have to hold on to your hat. It is full of a tremendous pressure and enormous power which sucks the reader in. … This is at least three novels condensed into one. … I am extremely impressed by the quick and clever phrasing. Evil is a scintillating novel about life as a whole – everything that is difficult and strange about being human.”
MIA GERDIN, SVERIGES RADIO/KULTURNYTT, SWEDEN

“Evil is twisted, crazy, stubborn, cheekily good. If you appreciate the kind of literature that is completely different from anything else you might know, then you need to read Evil.”
DENGLERS-BUCHKRITIK, GERMANY

“Evil is a clear conversation with the present. It touches on an uncomfortable truth about ourselves. Something we would rather not admit to. … Evil is a very political work … The storyteller is daring and challenging … Norddahl is a complete genius and reading some of the passages can be pure pleasure. The book is in fact structured in a novel manner, in small passages of text, most of them the size of internet news items. In such a manner this 540-page story manages to hold the reader’s attention throughout. There’s never a dead spot in the work. …
The book also deals with the distance we sometimes appear to have from human history. As if we have progressed beyond history, stand apart from it somehow, and horrors like the holocaust only exist in books and movies, not in the world we live in, not in reality. …
In Evil history is alive and kicking, and we are participants in it. …
As a political work, Evil is simply a masterpiece. It speaks to the heart of a nation which tends to avoid the truth about itself. Everyone who wants to look the truth about Iceland, and the surrounding world, in the face has to read this. After than we can start talking to one another.”
JON BJARKI MAGNUSSON, DV DAILY, ICELAND

“Fascism has no sense of irony, it says somewhere, and irony must therefore prove a useful tool in the struggle against it. You want to believe that at any rate after reading Evil, but even if it is not the case, certainly here is a beautiful and expansive novel, a tremendous feat I must say, about injured people wandering around an ailing world in all its misery – and splendour.”
BJORN UNNAR VALSSON, BOKMENNTIR.IS