A razor-sharp satire on the many forms of silence, on surrender in the face of atrocities, and on reckonings that never come to pass.
When a rising political star is quietly sidelined after a scandal involving a heart transplant and political nepotism, he finds himself reassigned to the newly established Bureau of Information and charged with curating a government-backed “fact database” meant to counter disinformation. But in this Kafkaesque new role, Steinn is soon entangled in something far more dangerous than career rehab. An ambitious young developer proposes to feed millions of archival documents into a powerful AI to uncover historical truths, only for the machine to reveal unfortunate connections between Icelandic and German authorities in the 1939s. As suppressed facts surface and the line between truth, power, and memory begins to fray, Steinn, his ex-partner (now his boss), and the team must confront not only the ghosts of the past but the ideological biases of the very tool they’ve unleashed.
The Facts is a sharp and chilling novel about the weaponization of truth in the age of AI, exploring what societies choose to remember and what they are desperate to forget. A darkly humorous and intellectually provocative story.
- Nominated for the Icelandic Literary Prize 2025
“With philosophical sharpness, the author conjures a complex portrait of the transience of truth amid the information chaos of our time. The nation’s submissiveness toward those in power becomes starkly visible when a minister establishes an Information Office and hires his disgraced former assistant as director of a fact-checking bureau. Haukur Már Helgason delves into the most uncomfortable chapters of Iceland’s past and lifts us out of them with the help of an unhinged truth-distortion machine.”
THE JURY OF THE ICELANDIC LITERARY PRIZE, WHEN NOMINATED
“A fascinating novel.”
TT, KILJAN, NATIONAL TV
“This book is brilliant. … A sharp, lively satire of party politics, government bureaucracy, the media, nepotism, scandals, and cancel culture, this original and forward-thinking novel is as entertaining as it is thought-provoking.”
SJOFN ASARE, LESTRARKLEFINN.IS
“Reykjavik Prison sheds light on atrocities at the roots of our Republic. The book is an unforgettable monument to people that authorities sacrificed. And a middle-finger raised to those authorities.”
KRISTIN OMARSDOTTIR, WRITER
