In the midst of so much Nordic suspense, authors like Jon Kalman Stefansson escape us. Because one ends up being noticed from a point antagonistic to the general trend or runs the risk of going unnoticed for not joining the official labeling of the day. So you go for the completely disruptive as Karl Ove Karl Knausgard or you join the battalion of the Jo nesbo and company delving to the depths of the police thriller.
But look where there is life beyond labels. Because the Icelandic Jon Kalman Stefansson is not completely opposed to the Nordic setting as a background narrative resource, with its point between the exotic and the strange to the alienating. It's just that Stefansson takes advantage of that extreme northern prism to offer a novel mosaic. Characters as changed perspective in our own world, but who move in small spaces exposed to the coldness of the Universe.
And certainly that is the type of literature that ultimately enriches. Because the complement that supposes a new change of vision makes it easier to discover new angles, more depth, quantity of reliefs with their turgidities and their abysses. That is why Stefansson is recommended without forgetting, of course, an exquisite dedication to the humanism of short distances, of emotions. Without forgetting the humor and the recurrent little essential things, those that in the end only the most willful writers can transmit to us.
Top 3 recommended novels by Jon Kalman Stefansson
Summer light, and then the night
The cold is capable of freezing time in a place like Iceland, already shaped by its nature as an island suspended in the North Atlantic, equidistant between Europe and America. What has been a singular geographical accident to narrate the ordinary with exceptionality for the rest of the world that considers it exotic. Cold but exotic, like everything that can happen in that place of inextinguishable summers of light and winters plunged into darkness.
Other current Icelandic authors such as Arnaldur Indriðason they take advantage of the circumstance to prolong that Scandinavian noir as a "closer" literary current. But in the case of Jon Kalman Stefansson, as we said before, the narrative essences seem to be swaying in new currents. Because there is a lot of magic in the contrast between the cold and the distance from the world and the human ardor that makes its way through the ice. And it is always interesting to discover in greater depth that realism made into a literary presentation, a novel with overtones of certainty that brings the idiosyncrasies of remote places closer.
Constructed from brief brushstrokes, Summer light, and then the night portrays in a peculiar and captivating way a small community on the Icelandic coast far from the tumult of the world, but surrounded by a nature that imposes a very particular rhythm and sensitivity on them. There, where it would seem that the days are repeated and an entire winter could be summed up in a postcard, lust, secret longings, joy and loneliness link days and nights, so that the everyday coexists with the extraordinary.
With humor and tenderness for human foibles, Stefánsson immerses himself in a series of dichotomies that mark our lives: modernity versus tradition, the mystical versus the rational, and fate versus chance.
Between Heaven and Earth
The deceptive line of the horizon, which once made men think of a flat world, finally draws its impossible kisses in places like Iceland. From the magnetic encounter, orgasms arise as if from colored clouds spilled over the sky. Science can explain whatever it wants, it was always better before when everything was explained by gods, miracles or magic.
In this first part of the boy trilogy the border between life and death is dyed in those same intense colors. Only here it is not the land that receives the kiss but a merciless sea, as it always was to support one-way trips or adventures without a final log.
The novel is set just over a century ago, in a fishing village in the western fjords, between steep mountains and a generous and voracious sea, capable of both giving food and taking lives. Following a centuries-old tradition, men go fishing from a very young age in tiny boats, often paddling for hours through the dark swell to reach the cod schools. And they don't know how to swim.
One night, a boy and his friend Bárður embark on Pétur's gang and set out to sea. Barely teenagers, they share their love of books and their desire to see the world. After releasing the lines, while awaiting capture, the horizon fills with clouds and a dangerous winter blizzard rises. The boat barely begins its return to land and, as the polar cold increases, the border that separates life and death may depend on a single garment: a fur jacket.
the sadness of angels
Winter comes to an end, but the snow still covers everything: the ground, the trees, the animals, the roads. Fighting against the icy north wind, Jens, the postman who travels through the isolated villages of the west coast of Iceland, takes refuge in Helga's house, where several people are gathered drinking coffee and brandy, and listening to Shakespeare being recited from the lips of a young stranger who arrived in the village three weeks ago with a trunk full of books.
However, neither the warmth of home nor good company can hold Jens back as he continues to deliver the mail in one of the most remote fjords in the region. Only this time he will be accompanied by the unknown boy, with whom, going through storms and blizzards, he will travel the paths that border the cliffs in a dangerous journey marked by encounters with farmers and fishermen in the area. During the hard day, the two travelers will also enjoy moments of great beauty, stoicism and tenderness, and their disquisitions on love, life and death will slowly melt the ice that separates them from themselves and from the rest of men.
The sadness of the angels is a book of such unique and enveloping beauty as the fulgid landscapes that the protagonists travel through between nights populated by the whispers of an invisible and unfathomable environment. In that inhospitable environment, when the line that separates life from death is so fragile, only what really ties us to this world matters.
