Names for the Sea: Strangers in Iceland - Couverture souple

Moss, Sarah

Couverture souple

ISBN 10 : 184708415X ISBN 13 : 9781847084156

Editeur : Granta Books, 2012

Synopsis

Novelist Sarah Moss had a childhood dream of moving to Iceland, sustained by a wild summer there when she was nineteen. In 2009, she saw an advertisement for a job at the University of Iceland and applied on a whim, despite having two young children and a comfortable life in an English cathedral city. The resulting adventure was shaped by Iceland's economic collapse, which halved the value of her salary, by the eruption of Eyjafjallajokull and by a collection of new friends, including a poet who saw the only bombs fall on Iceland in 1943, a woman who speaks to elves and a chef who guided Sarah's family around the intricacies of Icelandic cuisine. Sarah was drawn to the strangeness of Icelandic landscape, and explored hillsides of boiling mud, volcanic craters and fissures, and the unsurfaced roads that link remote farms and fishing villages in the far north. She walked the coast path every night after her children were in bed, watching the northern lights and the comings and goings of migratory birds. As the weeks and months went by, the children settled in local schools and Sarah got to know her students and colleagues, she and her family learned new ways to live.

A propos du livre

Revue de presse :

Names for the Sea is Moss's memoir of her family s first year in Iceland, a journey from southern England to the nether reaches of the North Pole, and it is quite a ride. In fact, it s one of the most enjoyable travel books I ve read ... What I was thrilled to read was the mundane oddness ... It s hilarious in its unexpectedness, more like a dispatch from Gulliver than A Year in Provence ... This is a work of humour, for sure, and I loved her puncturing of Icelanders tales of derring-do, the obsession with pride and shame. More than that, it s a work of strange intelligence that jars like poetry. So many passages made me pause, to long to read her two novels ... Moss does eventually return, and Iceland is so odd it instantly starts to feel for her fictional . I feel the same about this book: it has beauty enough to feel fictional --The Times

A fascinating and unusual book, a genuine news from nowhere, the gripping account of one person thinking and perceiving for herself --Literary Review

Biographie de l'auteur :

SARAH MOSS was educated at Oxford University and is a senior Lecturer in Literature and Place at the Cornwall Campus of Exeter University. She is the author of two novels; Cold Earth, and Night Waking, which was selected for the Fiction Uncovered Award in 2011, and the co-author of Chocolate: A Global History. She spent 2009-10 as a visiting lecturer at the University of Reykjavik.

À propos de cette édition

• Éditeur: Granta Books
• Date d'édition: 2012
• ISBN 10: 184708415X
• ISBN 13: 9781847084156
• Reliure: Broché
• Nombre de pages: 336