Fish Can Sing
  • Published: 1 July 2010
  • ISBN: 9781407092812
  • Imprint: Vintage Digital
  • Format: EBook
  • Pages: 256

Fish Can Sing

Formats & editions
EBook
1 Jul 2010
Paperback
28 Sep 2001
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A story about growing up, full of the strangeness, humour and beauty of Iceland

*BY THE WINNER OF THE NOBEL PRIZE IN LITERATURE*

'Laxness at his best: a reminder of the mad hilarity of the Icelandic sensibility. An endearing and unforgettable voice' Nicholas Shakespeare

Abandoned as a baby, Alfgrimur is content to spend his days as a fisherman living in the turf cottage outside Reykjavik with the elderly couple he calls grandmother and grandfather. There he shares the mid-loft with a motley bunch of eccentrics and philosophers who find refuge in the simple respect for their fellow men that is the ethos at the Brekkukot. But the narrow horizons of Alfgrimur's idyllic childhood are challenged when he starts school and meets Iceland's most famous singer, the mysterious Garoar Holm. Garoar encourages him to aim for the 'one true note', but how can he attain it without leaving behind the world that he loves?

'It is a novel (a world) that transmits something of the wonder of life' Murray Bail
  • Published: 1 July 2010
  • ISBN: 9781407092812
  • Imprint: Vintage Digital
  • Format: EBook
  • Pages: 256
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About the author

Halldor Laxness

Halldór Laxness (Author)
Halldór Laxness (1908 - 98) was born near Reykjavik, Iceland. His first novel was published when he was seventeen. The undisputed master of contemporary Icelandic fiction and one of the outstanding novelists of the twentieth-century, he wrote more than sixty books. Laxness was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1955.

Also by Halldor Laxness

Salka Valka
Under the Glacier
Wayward Heroes
The Atom Station
Iceland's Bell
World Light
Paradise Reclaimed
See all

Praise for Fish Can Sing

Laxness is a poet who writes to the edge of the pages, a visionary who allows us a plot: he takes a Tolstoyan overview, he weaves in an Evelyn Waugh-like humour: it is not possible to be unimpressed

Daily Telegraph

This weird and wonderful novel, about the price you pay for 'the one true note', is Laxness at his best: a reminder of the mad hilarity of the Icelandic sensibility. An endearing and unforgettable voice

Nicholas Shakespeare

It is a novel (a world) that transmits something of the wonder of life, its strangeness, its goodness, ocassions for stubbornness, and the stoicism of people - people everywhere

Murray Bail

Laxness's view of a child's bounded universe has humour and a light touch

Guardian

Laxness is a poet who writes to the edge of the pages, a visionary who allows us a plot: he takes a Tolstoyan overview, he weaves in an Evelyn Waugh-like humour: it is not possible to be unimpressed

Daily Telegraph

This weird and wonderful novel, about the price you pay for 'the one true note', is Laxness at his best: a reminder of the mad hilarity of the Icelandic sensibility. An endearing and unforgettable voice

Nicholas Shakespeare

It is a novel (a world) that transmits something of the wonder of life, its strangeness, its goodness, ocassions for stubbornness, and the stoicism of people - people everywhere

Murray Bail

Laxness's view of a child's bounded universe has humour and a light touch

Guardian