Barely alive after a solo expedition out on Vatnajokull Glacier, Austrian toponymist Bernhardt Fingerberg makes his way back to civilization. While nursing him back to health in a hotel room, the physician Dr Lassi tries to get to the bottom of the Viennese scholar’s strange trek into the highlands of Iceland.
Was he studying toponyms out on the ice, or retracing the footsteps of a 20 year old crime, an event that involved someone very close to him?
- The Icelandic Booksellers‘ Prize 2014
- The Icelandic Literary Prize 2014
- Best Translated Book Awards 2019 Finalist
- Nominated for the National Translation Award, ALTA, 2019
“Frightfully brilliant…One of the most interesting
and remarkable novels of the year.”
KILJAN, NATIONAL TV
FIVE STARS OUT OF FIVE POSSIBLE
“Completely magical.”
FRETTABLADID DAILY
“Wastelands is like the highlands – unlike anything.”
KJARNINN.IS
“It’s a wild ride, unlike anything you’ve read.”
JOSH COOK, PORTER SQUARE BOOKS
“Stunning novel … a collection of Icelandic stories,
realist and mythic, historical and fictional,
nestled inside an epic adventure.”
THE ARKANSAS INTERNATIONAL
“It’s a brilliant, ecstatic, hallucinatory arabesque consisting of nested tales of decreasing reliability and increasing self-awareness—all centering upon this blasted Icelandic emptiness where having or knowing anything seems only barely possible, where one glimpses the struggle to verify the contents of the world in bleakest terms.”
DAVID SEARCY, THE LITERARY HUB, US
“Part adventure, part history, and part madness! Sigurdsson’s nested rant of a narrative swept the literary awards in his native Iceland and is now one of the best books translated into English this year. and the winner is…ORAEFI: THE WASTELAND!!!!”
KEATON PATTERSON, BRAZOS BOOK BUYER’S BOOK OF THE YEAR AWARDS
“… filled with morsels of wisdom, and the author’s insight into the soul of the Icelandic nation is phenomenal. …
contains strong criticism of those attitudes underpinning boundless utilitarianism, unlimited tourism, and the Klondike madness that has infiltrated modern-day Iceland as a result of tourism. The novel’s message is that tourism has more in common with catastrophe than progress, that it turns everything into a wasteland like the volcanic eruptions in the glacier. …
Much is beautifully done in this latest work by Ófeigur Sigurdsson. He makes deft references to the paragons of world literature, even in his most outlandish descriptions, such as when Bernhardur loses one of his buttocks like Cunégonde in Voltaire’s Candide. There are also many references to El Dorado, the magic valley where wild livestock and giant rams rule, as if conjured from the imagination of Bjartur of Sumarhus. Also, more sombrely, the author refers to the sale of the land, which in many ways is reminiscent of another work by Halldór Laxness, The Atom Station. …
an absolute boon. This work categorically puts him among the most noteworthy and original authors of his generation.”
FRIDA BJORK INGVARSDOTTIR, VIDSJA/NATIONAL BROADCASTING SERVICE
FOUR AND A HALF STARS OUT OF FIVE POSSIBLE
“Ofeigur Sigurdsson’s new novel, Wastelands, is a magical encounter with Icelandic nature and culture, the storytelling tradition, and the soul of the nation …
takes a firm seat among the most noteworthy and original contemporary authors …
His criticism of society and Icelanders’ attitude towards nature and the future is very strong and it is impossible not to be swept along on this powerful journey into the world of words …”
EINAR FALUR INGOLFSSON, MORGUNBLADID
