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Bjoerk (Paperback)
Bjork; Text written by Klaus Biesenbach, Alex Ross, Nicola Dibben, Timothy Morton, …
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R1,777
R1,457
Discovery Miles 14 570
Save R320 (18%)
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Ships in 10 - 15 working days
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Reykjavik, 1918. The eruptions of the Katla volcano darken the sky
night and day. Yet despite the natural disaster, the shortage of
coal and the Great War still raging in the outside world, life in
the small capital goes on as always. Sixteen-year-old Mani Steinn
lives for the movies. Awake, he lives on the fringes of society.
Asleep, he dreams in pictures, the threads of his own life weaving
through the tapestry of the films he loves. When the Spanish flu
epidemic comes ashore, killing hundreds of townspeople and forcing
thousands to their sick beds, the shadows that linger at the edges
of existence grow darker and Mani is forced to re-evaluate both the
society around him and his role in it. Evoking the moment when
Iceland's saga culture met the new narrative form of the cinema and
when the isolated island became swept up in global events, this is
the story of a misfit transformed by his experiences in a world
where life and death, reality and imagination, secrets and
revelations jostle for dominance.
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The Blue Fox (Paperback)
Sjon; Translated by Victoria Cribb
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R261
R211
Discovery Miles 2 110
Save R50 (19%)
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Ships in 9 - 15 working days
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Winner of the Nordic Council Literature Prize 'Enchantingly poetic
. . . spellbinding . . . magical . . . exceptional' Independent On
a stark Icelandic mountainside, the imposing Reverend Baldur
Skuggason hunts an elusive blue vixen for her near-mythical pelt.
The treacherous journey across snow and ice will push his physical
and mental endurance to the limit. In Baldur Skuggason's parish, a
young woman with Down's Syndrome is buried. After being found
shackled to the timbers of a shipwreck in 1868, she was rescued by
the naturalist Fridrik B. Fridjonsson. Now he will open the package
she always carried with her, hoping to solve the puzzle of her
origins. As the ice begins to melt, the mystery surrounding the
trio's connected fates is unravelled in this spellbinding fable, an
exquisite tale of metamorphosis by one of Iceland's most acclaimed
writers. 'A magical novel' Bjoerk 'Describes its world with
brilliant, precise, concrete colour and detail... Comic and
lyrical.'AS Byatt, The Times
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The Blue Fox (Paperback)
Sjon; Translated by Victoria Cribb
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R281
R211
Discovery Miles 2 110
Save R70 (25%)
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Ships in 10 - 15 working days
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Set against the stark backdrop of the Icelandic winter, an
elusive, enigmatic fox leads a hunter on a transformative quest. At
the edge of the hunter's territory, a naturalist struggles to build
a life for his charge, a young woman with Down syndrome whom he had
rescued from a shipwreck years before. By the end of Sjon's
slender, spellbinding fable of a novel, none of their lives will be
the same. Winner of the 2005 Nordic Council Literature Prize--the
Nordic world's highest literary honor--"The Blue Fox "is part
mystery, part fairy tale, and the perfect introduction to a
mind-bending, world-class literary talent.
Shortlisted for the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize and the
International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award 'A terrific read...an
extraordinarily accomplished novel' Independent 'Kaleidoscopic and
mesmerising, comic and poignant' TLS In this magical evocation of a
vanished age, a poet and self-taught healer is banished in 1635 to
a barren island off Iceland - a place darkened by superstition,
poverty and cruelty. With only a purple sandpiper for company,
Jonas Palmason retraces his path to exile, recalling his exorcism
of a walking corpse, the massacre of innocent Basque whalers at the
hands of local villagers and the deaths of three of his children.
But amid the cacophony of Copenhagen he will find hope and,
finally, recognition of his enlightened ideas.
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Red Milk (Paperback)
Sjon; Translated by Victoria Cribb
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R264
R214
Discovery Miles 2 140
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Ships in 9 - 15 working days
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'A book like a blade of light, searching out and illuminating the
darkest corners of history . . . It's vivid, unputdownable, alive,
and written with unerring artfulness and subtlety.' Neel Mukherjee
Gunnar Kampen grows up in Reykjavik during the Second World War in
a household fiercely opposed to Hitler and Nazism. A caring brother
and son, at nineteen he seems set to lead a conventional life. Yet
in the spring of 1958, he founds a covert, anti-Semitic nationalist
party with ties to a burgeoning international network of neo-Nazis
- a cause that will take him on a clandestine mission to England
from which he never returns. In this striking novel, inspired by
one of the ringleaders of an Icelandic neo-Nazi group formed in the
late 1950s, Sjon masterfully constructs the portrait of an ordinary
young man who becomes a right-wing zealot. Exposing the roots of
the far-right movements of today, Red Milk is a timely reminder
that the seeds of extremism can be hard to detect and the allure of
fascism remains dangerously potent.
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Red Milk (Hardcover)
Sjon; Translated by Victoria Cribb
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R443
R359
Discovery Miles 3 590
Save R84 (19%)
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Ships in 9 - 15 working days
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'A book like a blade of light, searching out and illuminating the
darkest corners of history . . . It's vivid, unputdownable, alive,
and written with unerring artfulness and subtlety.' Neel Mukherjee
Gunnar Kampen grows up in Iceland during the Second World War in a
household fiercely opposed to Hitler and Nazism. At nineteen he
seems set for a conventional, dutiful life. And yet in the spring
of 1958, he founds a covert, anti-Semitic nationalist party, a
cause that will take him on a clandestine mission to England from
which he never returns. Inspired by one of the ringleaders of a
little-known neo-Nazi group that was formed in Iceland in the
1950s, Sjon's portrait of an ardent fascist is as thought-provoking
as it is disturbing. As this taut and fascinating novel suggests,
the seeds of extremism can be hard to detect - and the ideology of
the far-right remains dangerously potent.
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Whispering Muse (Paperback)
Sjon; Translated by Victoria Cribb
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R355
R294
Discovery Miles 2 940
Save R61 (17%)
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Ships in 10 - 15 working days
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"Sublime . . . A work of coy humor and shape-shifting magic ."
--"The Wall Street Journal
"
Sjon's novels have been championed by a veritable pantheon of
literary luminaries: Junot Diaz, David Mitchell, A. S. Byatt, Hari
Kunzru, and Alberto Manguel, who calls "The Whispering Muse ""an
extraordinary, powerful fable--a marvel." "The Whispering Muse "is
Sjon's masterpiece so far.
The year is 1949 and Valdimar Haraldsson, an eccentric Icelander
with elevated ideas about the influence of fish consumption on
Nordic civilization, has had the extraordinary good fortune to be
invited to join a Danish merchant ship on its way to the Black Sea.
Among the crew is the mythical hero Caeneus, disguised as the
second mate. Every evening after dinner he entrances his fellow
travelers with the tale of how he sailed with the fabled vessel the
"Argo" on the Argonauts' quest to retrieve the Golden Fleece.
What unfolds is a slender, brilliant, always entertaining novel
that evokes Borges and Calvino as it weaves together tales of myth
and antiquity with the modern world in a literary voice so singular
as to seem possessed.
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CoDex 1962 (Paperback)
Victoria Cribb; Sjon
1
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R309
R254
Discovery Miles 2 540
Save R55 (18%)
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Ships in 9 - 15 working days
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'A masterpiece . . . I challenge any author to top it!' Sigridur
Alberstsdottir, Icelandic National Broadcasting Service. Josef
Loewe enters the world as a lump of clay - carried in a hatbox by
his Jewish father Leo, a fugitive in WWII Germany. Taking refuge in
a small-town guesthouse, Leo discovers a kindred spirit in the
young woman who nurses him back to health and together they shape
the clay into a baby. But en route to safety in Iceland, he is
robbed of the ring needed to bring the child to life. It is not
until 1962 that Josef can be 'born', only to grow up with a rare
disease. Fifty-three years on, it leads him into the hands of a
power-hungry Icelandic geneticist, just when science and politics
are threatening to lead us all down a dark, dangerous road. At once
playful and profoundly serious, this remarkable novel melds
multiple genres into a unique whole: a mind-bending read and a
biting, timely attack on nationalism.
"From the Mouth of the Whale "is an Icelandic saga for the
modern age. The year is 1635. Iceland is a world darkened by
superstition, poverty, and cruelty. Men of science marvel over a
unicorn's horn, poor folk worship the Virgin in secret, and both
books and men are burned.
Sjon introduces us to Jonas Palmason, a poet and self-taught
healer, banished to a barren island for heretical conduct, as he
recalls his gift for curing "female maladies," his exorcism of a
walking corpse on the remote Snjafjoll coast, the frenzied massacre
of innocent Basque whalers at the hands of local villagers, and the
deaths of three of his children. Palmason's story echoes across
centuries and cultures, an epic tale that makes us see the world
anew.
'Funny, strange, provoking and disturbing; darkness with a light
touch.' TLS A master storyteller, Sjon weaves together Greek and
Nordic myths with the legacies of the Second World War in this
mesmerising novel, which reminds us that everything is capable of
change. Valdimar Haraldsson is an eccentric Icelander with dubious
ideas about the relationship between fish consumption and Nordic
superiority. To his delight, in the spring of 1949, he is invited
to join a Danish merchant ship on its voyage to the Black Sea. He
is less delighted with the lack of fish on the menu. Worse, his
fellow travellers show no interest in his 'Fish and Culture'
lecture. They prefer the enthralling tales of the second mate,
Caeneus, who every evening regales them with his adventures aboard
the Argo, on Jason's legendary quest for the Golden Fleece.
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