Posts filed under 'iceland'

What’s New in Translation: August 2018

Find respite from the heat with these new reads.

From Icelandic landscapes to art history, August brings with it an exciting new selection of books. Whether you’re looking for a book to pass the hot summer days, or are in the market for inspired poetry, the Asymptote team has something for you in this new edition of What’s New in Translation. And if that’s not enough, head over to the Asymptote Book Club for fresh reads, delivered to your doorstep every month!

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Öræfi: The Wastelands by Ófeigur Sigurðsson, translated from the Icelandic by Lytton Smith, Deep Vellum, 2018

Reviewed by Jacob Silkstone, Assistant Managing Editor

One of the many epic stories retold in Ófeigur Sigurðsson’s Öræfi: The Wastelands (“that punctuation mark… both pushes words (and worlds) away from one another and means they’re roped together,” according to translator Lytton Smith) is the story of Öræfi itself. Formerly known as Hérað, the Province, a place in which “butter drips from every blade of grass,” it was devastated by the most destructive volcanic eruption in Iceland’s recorded history:

The chronicles record that one morning in 1362 Knappafjells glacier exploded and spewed over the Lómagnúpur sands and carried everything off into the sea, thirty fathoms deep… The Province was destroyed, all its people and creatures annihilated; no sheep or cattle survived, no creatures left alive anywhere… the corpses of people and animals washed up on beaches far and wide… the bodies were cooked and tender and the flesh so loose on the bones it fell apart.

READ MORE…

Poems by Icelandic Poet Gerður Kristný

Translated by Spenser Santos

Öxnadalur

 

Fog drowns the dale

so the ridgepeaks

no longer show

 

From Hraunslake

gasps carry in

crackling silence

 *

Summereve in Gotland

 

Pier

stretches its tail

out in silvery waves

 

The sun strokes

a lightbow

over seaplain

 

Heavens

get to play

dusksong

 *

India

 

Man

goes to sleep

on a traffic island

 

Newsprint his down

 

Little room

for sleepwalking

 

in the seashallows

shines ironskin

of coldeyed sharks

***

Gerður Kristný’s poetry has charmed readers the world over. They have won her, among other honors, the Icelandic Literary Prize and nominations for the Nordic Council Literature Prize. Her most recent book of poetry, Drápa, tells the unsettling story of the night the mircus comes to town.

Spenser Santos is an MFA candidate in literary translation and Ph.D. candidate in English at the University of Iowa. He translates from Spanish, Old English, and Icelandic. His translation thesis is a translation of the Old English Illustrated Hexateuch translation of the Book of Exodus. He holds a Bachelor of Arts from Winona State University, where he majored in English, Spanish, and Writing.

Weekly News Roundup, 25th July 2014: Bookin’ it, Icy lit

This week's literary highlights from across the world

The Man Booker Prize decision to include all English-language pieces of fiction (not just those in the Commonwealth or Ireland) caused quite a stir last year. Since the longlist has been announced, take a look at what it means to include writers from the United States among the Bookish. That being said, the English novel as we know it is dying, or dead already (for better or for worse: doesn’t this mean new opportunities for translated lit)? And another English-language prize, longlisted: the so-called “International” Dylan Thomas Prize has announced those in the running for the 30,000-pound award. READ MORE…