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  • Published: 10 February 2022
  • ISBN: 9781473597761
  • Imprint: Vintage Digital
  • Format: EBook
  • Pages: 272

Under the Glacier




Darkly funny and surprising novel about superstition and religion in an isolated Icelandic town. With an introduction from Susan Sontag.

'Wildly original, morose, uproarious... It is also one of the funniest books ever written' Susan Sontag

A naive young man is sent by the bishop of Iceland to investigate a small town that has reportedly lost its faith. The church is boarded up and the errant pastor lives with a woman who is not his wife. He has also allowed a corpse to be lodged in the glacier. So the rumours go.

What he discovers is a community that regards itself as the centre of the world - earthly yet otherworldly, banal yet astonishing. Brimming with humour, mystery, and the supernatural this is a surprising and moving novel from the Nobel Prize-winning Icelandic author.

WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY SUSAN SONTAG

  • Published: 10 February 2022
  • ISBN: 9781473597761
  • Imprint: Vintage Digital
  • Format: EBook
  • Pages: 272

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.

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Praise for Under the Glacier

This is a novel of immense charm... It's a book of ideas, like no other Laxness ever wrote

Susan Sontag

Under the Glacier is hilarious, in a deadpan, northern-edge-of-the-world sort of way

Andrew O'Hehir, Salon

Whimsical... deliriously funny... impishly chaotic

Kirkus Reviews

Under the Glacier is a journey to the center of Laxness's antic imagination, and it is well worth the trip

Vincent Czyz, The Arts Fuse