Back in Reykjavik after a vacation in London, Emil Halldorsson is waiting for a call from a beautiful girl, Greta, that he met on the plane ride home, and he’s just put on a pot of coffee when an unexpected visitor knocks on the door. Peeking through a window, Emil spies an erstwhile friend—Havard Knutsson, his one-time roommate and current resident of a Swedish mental institution—on his doorstep, and he panics, taking refuge under his bed and hoping the frightful nuisance will simply go away.
Havard won’t be so easily put off, however, and he breaks into Emil’s apartment and decides to wait for his return—Emil couldn’t have gone far; the pot of coffee is still warming on the stove. While Emil hides under his bed, increasingly unable to show himself with each passing moment, Havard discovers the booze, and he ends up hosting a bizarre party for Emil’s friends, and Greta.
An alternately dark and hilarious story of cowardice, comeuppance, and assumed identity, the breezy and straightforward style of The Pets belies its narrative depth, and disguises a complexity that grows with every page.
- Nominated for the Icelandic Literary Prize 2001
- Nominated for the DV Cultural Prize for Literature
REVIEWS
“Dark, strange, elusive, compelling, and oddly charming.”
KIRKUS REVIEWS
“The best short novel I’ve read this year. …
Small, dark, and hard to put down, The Pets may be a classic in the literature of small enclosed spaces.”
BARNES & NOBLE REVIEW
“An artful mystery about dead animals, mundane objects, and disobedient people.”
BELIEVER
“Brilliantly written and funny, no, very funny …
The Pets is one of the best pieces of Nordic literature I’ve read in a long time.”
BERLINGSKE TIDENDE, DENMARK
“I’m convinced beyond any doubt that Bragi Olafsson is among our best authors.”
DV NEWSPAPER
“One of the best novels written in Iceland in many years.”
MORGUNBLADID DAILY
“The Pets begins with a man relaxing at home in Reykjavík when an old acquaintance knocks at his door. But the backstory between the two men complicates this straightforward set-up: the protagonist has just returned to Reykjavík from London, where he was spending his winnings from a lucky lottery ticket, and his acquaintance is a drunkard with whom he once lived — in London, of all places — when the two of them were involved in a bizarre and ill-fated petsitting scenario. And the form of the novel complicates things even further. When the protagonist spies his acquaintance through the window and decides he doesn’t want to confront him, he goes into hiding, dives beneath his bed, and narrates the novel from there — first as the other man continues knocking, then as he breaks into the house and starts to dismantle it. There aren’t many narrative situations as simple as the disruption of ordinary life by an unexpected arrival, but The Pets takes it and runs with it, transforming it into something elaborate and whip-smart.”
ALEC DEWAR, THISISSPLICE.CO.UK
