The acclaimed Icelandic author will be discussing and signing History. A Mess (Open Letter Books), translated from the Icelandic by Lytton Smith. Co-presented by the Consulate General of Iceland in Winnipeg, the Icelandic Canadian Fron and Logberg-Heimskringla.
While studying a seventeenth-century diary, the protagonist of History, A Mess uncovers information about the first documented professional female artist. This discovery promises to change her academic career, and life in general…until she realizes that her “discovery” was nothing more than two pages stuck together. At this point there’s no going back though, and she goes to great lengths to hide her mistake-undermining her sanity in the process. A shifty, satirical novel that’s funny and colourful, while also raising essential questions about truth, research, and the very nature of belief.
Sigrun Palsdottir completed a PhD in the History of Ideas at the University of Oxford in 2001, after which she was a research fellow and lecturer at the University of Iceland. She worked as the editor of Saga, the principal peer reviewed journal for Icelandic history, from 2008 to 2016. Her previous titles include the historical biography Thora. A Bishop’s Daughter and Uncertain Seas, a story of a young couple and their three children who were killed when sailing from New York to Iceland aboard a ship torpedoed by a German submarine in 1944. Sigrun’s work has been nominated for the Icelandic Literary Prize, Icelandic Women’s Literature Prize, Hagthenkir Non-fiction Prize, and the DV Culture Prize. Uncertain Seas was chosen the best biography in 2013 by booksellers in Iceland.
McNally Robinson Booksellers 1120 Grant Avenue. Winnipeg, Manitoba. R3M 2A6 204-475-0483 or Toll Free 1-800-561-1833
Icelandic Canadian Frón 