Shortlisted for the Latvian Literature Year Prize “The Best Translation 2024”
Eighty-year old Herra Björnsson lies alone in her garage waiting to die. Oh, she has two weeks left, maybe three – she has booked her cremation appointment, at a blistering 1,000 degrees, so it won’t be long. But until then she has her cigarettes, her laptop, a World War II grenade, and her memories to sustain her.
One of the most original narrators in literary history, Herra takes readers with her on a dazzling ride of a novel as she reflects – in a voice by turns darkly funny, poignant and always, always smart – on the mishaps, tragedies and turns of luck that shaped her life. And with a bawdy, uncompromising spirit, she has survived it all. As hilarious as it is heartbreaking, Hallgrimur Helgason tells the deeply moving story of a woman swept up by the forces of history.
“Like John Irving on speed.”
LIFT, STUTTGART CITY MAGAZINE
“The hottest new book from Iceland is The Woman at 1,000 Degrees… What a story it is.”
WASHINGTON POST
“Clearly the best novel of the year 2013.”
todoliteratura.es
“600 pages filled with humor, feelings and a deep understanding of the tragic fate of women.”
LE POINT
“What a novel! Helgason’s Woman at 1000 Degrees is a gutsy, brilliant book: I could not tear myself away from it. Octogenarian Herra Bjornsson’s dying recollections, as she lies nursing a hand grenade between her legs in an Icelandic garage, hurtle the reader headfirst into an epic narrative of war, loss, desire and survival, across years and continents. Both funny and deeply moving, I finished it utterly dazzled, my ears ringing.”
HANNAH KENT, AUTHOR OF BURIAL RITES
“A deathbed recollection aglow with vitality, Woman at 1,000 Degrees leads us though the many tumultuous lives of Herra Björnsson, barrelling through historic darkness at a seemingly impossible pitch, one that offers moments of humor amid the sharpest of sorrows and alienation. This novel is a shock, a laugh, an evocation of grief, and a tribute to survival and imagination; Helgason’s vivid talents give voice to a woman whose last words are so frightfully alive that even as they answer to both present and past, one can’t imagine them bearing echoes. Because echoes are too pale for this book; what appears within can only reverberate as a series of unforgettable shouts.”
AFFINITY KONAR, AUTHOR OF MISCHLING
“Herra Björnsson may be dying at an advanced age in a garage but she has all her wits and a lifetime of grievances firmly in focus. Her fierce and sardonic deathbed confession carefully unfolds a harrowing tale of family upheaval, betrayal, war, and survival at dehumanizing cost. Hallgrimur Helgason’s audacious new novel is gripping, darkly comic, and utterly original.”
VALERIE MARTIN, AUTHOR OF THE GHOST OF MARY CELESTE
