The Blue Fox

The mind-bending miniature historical epic is Sjón's specialty, and is no exception. But it is also Sjón's most realistic, accessible, and heartfelt work yet. It is the story of a young man on the fringes of a society that is itself at the fringes of the world-at what seems like history's most tumultuous, perhaps ultimate moment.

Máni Steinn is queer in a society in which the idea of homosexuality is beyond the furthest extreme. His city, Reykjavik in 1918, is homogeneous and isolated and seems entirely defenseless against the Spanish flu, which has already torn through Europe, Asia, and North America and is now lapping up on Iceland's shores. And if the flu doesn't do it, there's always the threat that war will spread all the way north. And yet the outside world has also brought Icelanders cinema! And there's nothing like a dark, silent room with a film from Europe flickering on the screen to help you escape from the overwhelming threats-and adventures-of the night, to transport you, to make you feel like everything is going to be all right. For Máni Steinn, the question is whether, at Reykjavik's darkest hour, he should retreat all the way into this imaginary world, or if he should engage with the society that has so soundly rejected him.

Описанные в романе события происходят в 1883 году в исландской глубинке. В сюжете неожиданным образом переплетаются судьбы трех героев: Фридрика, когда-то учившегося за границей в Дании, Аббы – девушки с синдромом Дауна, которую нашли на судне, потерпевшем крушение у берегов Исландии, и священника Бальдура Скуггасона – большого любителя лисьей охоты. Несмотря на легкость повествования и некоторый налет сказочности, книга затрагивает проблемы человечности сегодняшнего общества.

Сьон (р. 1962) – исландский поэт, прозаик, драматург, сценарист, переводчик. Лауреат Литературной премии Северного совета (2005) за книгу «Скугга-Бальдур», Исландской литературной премии (2013), кавалер ордена Искусств и изящной словесности Франции (2021). Известен как автор текстов к песням Бьорк, был номинирован на премию «Оскар» (2001) как соавтор ее песни к фильму «Танцующая в темноте». «Скугга-Бальдур» (2003) – пятый роман Сьона, переведен на 35 языков. Русский перевод был номинирован на литературную премию «Ясная Поляна» (2019).

The year is 1635. Iceland is a world darkened by superstition, poverty, and cruelty.

Men of science marvel over a unicorn's horn, poor folk worship the Virgin in secret, and both books and men are burnt.

Jonas Palmason, a poet and self-taught healer, has been condemned to exile for heretical conduct, having fallen foul of the local magistrate. Banished to a barren island, Jonas recalls his gift for curing "female maladies," his exorcism of a walking corpse on the remote Snjafjoll coast, the frenzied massacre of innocent Basque whalers at the hands of local villagers, and the deaths of three of his children.

"Achingly brilliant, an epic made mad, made extraordinary." — Junot Díaz

"Hallucinatory, lyrical, by turns comic and tragic, this extraordinary novel should make Sjón an international name. His evocation of seventeenth century Iceland through the eyes of a man born before his time has stuck in my mind like nothing else I’ve read in the last year." — Hari Kunzru

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"An extraordinary, powerful fable — a marvel." — Alberto Manguel

"Sjón writes like a man under a spell, filled with enchantment and magic and great wit. He is a rogue of the first order." — Keith Donohue

The year is 1949 and Valdimar Haraldsson, an eccentric Icelander with elevated ideas about the influence of fish consumption on Nordic civilization, has had the singular good fortune to be invited to join a Danish merchant ship on its way to the Black Sea.

Among the crew is the mythical hero Caeneus, disguised as the second mate. Every evening after dinner he entrances his fellow travelers with the tale of how he sailed with the fabled vessel, the Argo, on the Argonauts' quest to retrieve the Golden Fleece.

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Victoria Cribb