#New Release: Icelandic Literary Prize winner, A FIST OR A HEART

Blurb:

The past returns with a fury for a woman coming to terms with her life in this award-winning novel by an acclaimed Icelandic author making her English-language debut.

Elín Jónsdóttir lives an isolated existence in Reykjavík, Iceland, making props and prosthetics for theatrical productions and Nordic crime flicks. In her early seventies, she has recently become fascinated with another loner, Ellen Álfsdóttir, a sensitive young playwright and illegitimate daughter of a famous writer. The girl has aroused maternal feelings in Elín, but she has also stirred discomfiting memories long packed away. Because their paths have crossed before. One doesn’t remember. The other is about to forget.

Soon they’ll discover all they have in common: difficult childhoods, trauma, and being outliers who have found space to breathe in creative expression. Yet the more Elín tries to connect with the young woman and unbox painful memories, the more tenuous her grasp on reality becomes.

Winner of the Icelandic Literary Prize, A Fist or a Heart is a gripping, artfully interwoven novel of power, secrets, and isolation by one of the most bracing and original voices of the author’s generation.

Buy link:

https://www.amazon.com/Fist-Heart-Krist%C3%ADn-Eir%C3%ADksd%C3%B3ttir-ebook/dp/B07LF3FCM7

Author bio:

Kristín Eiríksdóttir is an award-winning novelist, short story writer, poet, and playwright from Reykjavík, Iceland. Her original edition of A Fist or a Heart won the Icelandic Literary Prize 2017 as well as the Icelandic Women's Literature Prize 2017. The novel took second place for the Icelandic Booksellers' Prize and was selected as one of the best novels of 2017 by the Icelandic National Radio. Eiríksdóttir has published seven books and had three plays staged. Her short fiction has appeared in Best European Fiction 2011. A Fist or a Heart is her first novel to be translated into English.

Translator:

Larissa Kyzer is a writer and translator who was awarded a 2012 Fulbright grant to Iceland, where she lived for five years. Her translations include a collection of horror stories written by six to eight-year-old Icelandic schoolchildren, as well as fiction and poetry by Andri Snær Magnason, Auður Jónsdóttir, Fríða Ísberg, Kári Tulinius, Kristín Ragna Gunnarsdóttir, Kristín Svava Tómasdóttir, and Steinunn G. Helgadóttir, among others. She is a member of the American Literary Translators' Association, the PEN America Translation Committee, and the Reykjavík-based Ós Pressan Literary Collective. Larissa earned her Master’s degree in Translation Studies from the University of Iceland in 2017 and now lives and works in Brooklyn, New York.

For more information visit www.larissakyzer.com

Instagram: @larissa.kyzer