A book where the incredible is true, and the credible untrue!
This gripping novel is based on the fantastic but true story of the tragic life of Baron Charles Gauldrée Boilleau, a mysterious French/American musician and son of a French diplomat, turned farmer and entrepreneur in remote and backward Iceland in 1898-1901.
Baron Boilleau was a multifaceted man and the book gives us a vivid portrait of the “belle époque” of the Euro-American bourgeoisie, and how a man’s artistic aspirations and ideals of progress become shipwrecked once they hit the barren shores of a backward Icelandic society.
Sophisticated, a cellist and composer, educated in a British boarding school and with a second home on the Italian Riviera, Boilleau tries to establish a dairy in Iceland at the turn of the 1900’s. It can only lead to one thing: disaster.
An exceptionally well written book by one of Iceland’s most popular and respected authors of the past quarter-century.
“The Baron is a beautifully crafted book and an historical novel of the best possible kind.”
JON OLAFSSON,
MORGUNBLADID DAILY
“The story of the baron in Hvitarvellir is absolutely charming.”
HALLDOR GUDMUNDSSON,
FRETTABLADID NEWSPAPER
(b.1949) is one of Iceland’s most admired authors and the recipient of many awards. A superb poet, he has tackled every genre, published countless children’s books, written novels, collections of short stories, and scripts, and also worked as a translator. “Eldjarn is a More about the author