Dagur Hjartarson’s poems are an ode to life, love and joy. Bright silhouettes of love and brain surgery. Beauty in the unexpected meeting of love and death on the operating table.

Dagur has received the Tomas Gudmundsson Poetry Prize and a Grassroots Grant from the Icelandic Literature Center. His novel The Last Confession of Love earned him his place among the foremost novelists in Iceland.

“The poems in The Brain Operation are guileless and heartening. There’s no wallowing in pain and fear with dramatic declarations or emotional pornography, but rather meaning born of metaphorical correlation and sincerity… edifying stuff.”
STEINUNN INGA ÓTTARSDÓTTIR, KVENNABLAÐIÐ NEWSPAPER

“A carefully rendered and beautiful book of poems that will leave no one untouched, and one that most people ought to read … a wonderful example of how important poetry remains today. The speaker talks not only to his wife but also to those of us who must overcome our own darkness, and poetry can give us a way forward…”
HELGA BIRGISDOTTIR, FRÉTTABLAÐIÐ NEWSPAPER