This novel is unlike any other. It is a futuristic novel, a fantasy, a mystery, but above all: a poetic and mournful love story full of beauty and originality.
The buzzing sounded like someone playing a saw with the violin bow of the woman who broke his heart; quietly enough to not wake those who slept, loudly enough to bring those who were awake to tears …
More and more often, there’s a peculiar sound on a pedestrian bridge in downtown Reykjavik. Is it a design flaw? Or is it the murmur of the ages? Then mysterious phenomena emerge that don’t conform in any way to the laws of physics. Scientists are stumped. The stock market takes a dive. Poetry collections take over the best seller lists. Cats disappear. Lights flame up the sky. And love blossoms between a young couple in Reykjavik. When physics and poetry meet, Lightning appears.
Light Crawlers is the third novel by Dagur Hjartarson, who has received various recognitions for his work and praise from readers and critics for his personal and brilliant style.
R E V I E W S
4 out of 5 stars
“The story takes place in modern-day Reykjavik where the murmur of the ages ceaselessly assaults the Icelanders’ auditory senses and a kind fever for fiction has beset the nation…
manages in a unique way to capture certain ideas and experiences closer to the realm of the reader. … In this way the story is in conversation with the current moment, and in many ways it takes its inspiration from the pandemic and the various natural hazards we have faced in recent months and years. In this capacity the book might be shelved with disaster literature. But above all else, this is a human story of what it means to be alive during our times, caught in an unending tug-of-war between what once was and what has yet to come, and of how fiction can serve us as a useful tool to understand ourselves and the world we live in. Light Crawlers is at once a bizarre and beautiful book, well written, funny and smart.”
SNAEDIS BJORNSDOTTIR, MORGUNBLADID DAILY
“Dagur is in his element with Light Crawlers. This is a book that dances on the boundary line of literary genres, each a continent unto itself, a lyrical novel of science, it’s a veritable magic trick.”
JONAS REYNIR GUNNARSSON, AUTHOR
“The text is dancing on a thin line between originality and all that is far from all clichés, on the one hand, and creation so novel and clever that it tends to seem a bit self-satisfied … The text really works, though, thanks to well-written dialogues, so that the reader really trusts the writer. Those dialogues are plain and fresh and convincing. … They make the necessary balance against an account that tends toward heaviness and create an aesthetic suspense that turns out to be the account’s main theme.
… The author finds an elegant way of finishing off this science fiction story, adequately binding the threads that were introduced in the first half of the story, using poetic methods. The end of the story leaves the reader satisfied, yet curious, so that he will want to go back and forth a few pages in the novel.”
SOLVI HALLDORSSON, VIDSJA/NATIONAL BROADCASTING SERVICE
