AUÐUR AVA ÓLAFSDÓTTIR
This summer Auður Ava Ólafsdóttir’s new novel Eden will be released in Danish. Experience the prizewinning Icelandic author in conversation with the book’s interpreter Erik Skyum-Nielsen in our literature salon NordOrd.
Wednesday 23. August 2023, at 20.00
The language is elegant, floating and poetic in Auður Ava Ólafsdóttir texts, which both comprehend the largest and smallest things with sweetness, humor and seriousness. Or as the Icelandic fellow-author Sjón once said: “Ólafsdóttir’s speciality is the small travels we take to save ourselves and the ones we love. She is the heart's most noble cartographer."
Auður Ava Ólafsdóttir’s books not only excite her writer colleagues, but also the reviewers and the readers, who all now can enjoy a Danish translation of the new novel by Erik Skyum-Nielsen.
Eden
The novel is about the linguist Alba, who is named after a person at Lorca’s theatre plays, since her mother, a famous actress, was a great admirer of the spanish dramaturgy. Alba buys a piece of land, where nothing grows, with the purpose to plant trees and transform a wilderness consisting of black sand and lava into a garden of Eden. It is not only nature that is being treated by extinction, but also the ancient language Icelandic.
The book explores the language’s force and emphasis on the pressing questions about human responsibility and what it means to be human. Eden won in 2022 the Icelandic Book Seller Prize, which is given to the best Icelandic novel each year. A Danish translation of Eden will be released in June 2023.
Auður Ava Ólafsdóttir
Auður Ava Ólafsdóttir is born in 1958 in Iceland. Previously Ólafsdóttir have worked as an associate professor at the Institute of Art History at Iceland University, whereas today she is a full time writer. She had her novel debut in 1998, and has since received a series of awards for her novels, which are translated in a large number of different languages. In Danish her books have been published by Batzer & Co, with the Danish titles: Svaner bliver ikke skilt (2016), Aret (the winner of the Nordic Council's Literature Prize 2018), Stiklingen (2019), Miss Iceland (2019) and Dyreliv (2021).
Author Conversation at NordOrd
Auður Ava Ólafsdóttir will be in conversation with Erik Skyum-Nielsen about her new novel Eden and her authorship. The event will take 60 minutes.
The novel Eden will be sold with a favorable price at the literature café, which will be open 45 minutes before the event begins.
No numbered seats.
The event will be in Danish.
Tickets: 80 DKK.
The event is presented in collaboration with the Icelandic Embassy.