MARIA DUARTE, FIONA O’CONNOR and ANDY HEDGECOCK review Savage House, Enzo, Madfabulous, and Erupcja
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A book of bewitching narratives
PAUL SIMON falls under the spell of little known authors from an island at the edge of the world
Reykjavik in close-up
[Christine Zenino/Creative Commons]
CHRIS SEARLE recommends a work of love and deep admiration for a great musician
KENNY MacASKILL relishes a fictionalised account of the life and death of the principled Irish anti-colonialist, executed for betraying his English imperial masters
FIONA O’CONNOR admires an ambitious first novel that loosens South Africa’s rainbow collective to examine the racial tensions within
Aussie mining corporation murder, Liverpudlian ex-cop amnesia, a naive vigilante tries to reset capitalism, and the riddle of the dead psychoanalyst
SYLVIA HIKINS is persuaded by an entertaining play that the true miracle of Lourdes would be for attitudes toward disability to change
Book of Reykjavik
Edited by Becca Parkinson & Vera Juliusdottir
Comma Press £9.99
OUT of habit, I normally ignore a book’s various prologues, acknowledgements and afterwords as needless embellishments. It is usually better for the reader to encounter fiction unencumbered by someone else’s well-meaning but agenda-ladened framing.
For this collection of 10 short stories by contemporary Icelandic writers, I would counsel the complete opposite.
For those readers, like me, who know very little about the Icelandic capital, Sjon’s foreword and the introduction by Vera Juliusdottir provide an essential ready reckoner, an important orientation without telling us how to navigate the contributions.
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