Two people haunted by their own pasts find, in each other, the first real company they’ve had in years.

Thorgerdur, a sleep-deprived mother of two adrift in parental leave in Uppsala, is ambushed by a video resurrecting something from her life in Reykjavík a decade ago, just as an old friend invites her to their ten-year reunion. Sigurthor, a washed-up entertainer nursing a ruined reputation and outsized musical dreams, is hiding from his own countrymen in the same Swedish city.

A chance meeting at the tax office turns into an unlikely friendship, one that offers each of them the companionship, and the mirror they didn’t know they needed. As old grief, old shame and old ambition resurface, both must decide whether home is a place they can return to. A sharp, tender novel about marriage, mediocrity, friendship and the debts the past never stops collecting.

“One can only say hooray! … a genuine novel dealing with genuine issues, yet still so funny and clever.”
HALLGRIMUR HELGASON, AUTHOR (ON CROSSWIND)

“An entertaining and well-crafted novel … melancholic and filled with humour, the well-written prose flows, and nature is woven poetically into this formative journey. Einar Lövdahl emerges with a new tone in the Icelandic literary landscape.”
DANISH LIBRARY ASSESSMENT (ON CROSSWIND)

“charming … stylistically accomplished in its portrayal of being an outsider.”
LOTTE KIRKEBY, KRISTELIGT DAGBLAD (ON CROSSWIND)