All prizes Iceland
Íslensku bókmenntaverðlaunin
Iceland · Since 1989 · For books in Icelandic
Awarded by the Icelandic Publishers Association (Félag íslenskra bókaútgefenda) to original books in Icelandic; this is its fiction and poetry category (fagurbókmenntir, now skáldverk), for novels, story collections and poetry for adults. The prize year is the year the books were published: five are nominated around 1 December and the winner is announced early the following year.
The Icelandic Literary Prize was founded by the Icelandic Publishers Association to mark its centenary in 1989, to strengthen original Icelandic writing and encourage public debate about books. Publishers submit titles from the year's output; at the turn of November and December a jury for each category names five nominees, and a final jury made up of the category chairs and a chair appointed by the President of Iceland chooses one winner per category. The President presents the prizes at Bessastaðir, by 15 February of the following year. Until 2012 there were two categories, fiction and poetry, and non-fiction; a category for children's and young adult books was added in 2013. Because the nominations come in the middle of the Christmas book flood, they are widely used in marketing.
Icelandic Literary Prize 2025 · Shortlist
Title translated by AI:“Breathing Space”
Short stories · 105 pages
AI-generated summary:Short, surprising and odd stories, some true and some plainly invented, about people such as a whispering prompter, a doctor turned tiler and a tailor with X-ray eyes.
Icelandic Literary Prize 2025 · Shortlist
Title translated by AI:“The Facts”
Novel · 190 pages · Satire, Politics, Speculative
AI-generated summary:His political career over after a scandal, Steinn is put in charge of a state 'fact base', an AI meant to fight disinformation, until a student asks it about Nazi influence on Iceland's government.
Icelandic Literary Prize 2025 · Shortlist
Title translated by AI:“The Heaviest Element”
Jón Kalman Stefánsson · 62 when first published
Poetry · 125 pages
AI-generated summary:Poems on science and the divine, travel and the devilish, the present day and grief, which together with longing is the heaviest element.
Icelandic Literary Prize 2025 · Shortlist
Title translated by AI:“Movable Type”
Þórdís Helgadóttir · 44 when first published
Novel · 311 pages · Speculative
AI-generated summary:In a city flooded by rain during a pandemic, two employees keep a deserted printing museum going, drinking coffee, mending presses and waiting for the neighbour's cat.
Icelandic Literary Prize 2024 · Shortlist
Title translated by AI:“Journey's End”
Arnaldur Indriðason · 63 when first published
Novel · 267 pages · Historical
AI-generated summary:Iceland's national poet Jónas Hallgrímsson breaks his leg in a fall one night and, gravely ill in hospital, looks back on his life and on strange events in the valley where he grew up.
Icelandic Literary Prize 2024 · Shortlist
Title translated by AI:“Warm Soil”
Novel · 213 pages · Love
AI-generated summary:Karen goes uninvited to the funeral of the love of her life, and at the wake sees her colleague Ýmir through the window, apparently about to harm himself.
Icelandic Literary Prize 2024 · Shortlist
Title translated by AI:“Earthlight”
Gerður Kristný · 54 when first published
Poetry · 91 pages
AI-generated summary:Poems reminding us that we are born from darkness and in time return to it, and that for a while we adapt ourselves to the light.
Icelandic Literary Prize 2024 · Shortlist
Title translated by AI:“Celestial Bodies Above the World's Edge”
Jón Kalman Stefánsson · 61 when first published
Novel · 358 pages · Historical, Love
AI-generated summary:In 1615 the priest Pétur of Meyjarhóll writes a letter, report or indictment to make sense of events that have shaken the remote district of Brúnasandur and the lives of those he loves.
Icelandic Literary Prize 2023 · Shortlist
Auður Ava Ólafsdóttir · 65 when first published
Novel · 183 pages
AI-generated summary:Bambi, a 61-year-old trans woman who once worked as a DJ and now studies human cells, tells her story from sharing the womb with her twin brother to beginning to take female hormones.
Icelandic Literary Prize 2023 · Shortlist
Title translated by AI:“The Down Girl in the Fog”
Bjarni M. Bjarnason · 58 when first published
Novel · 336 pages · Historical
AI-generated summary:On the magical Langanes peninsula in the nineteenth century, Drauma-Jói, descended from sorcerers and gifted with second sight, fights again and again for his place in the world.
Icelandic Literary Prize 2023 · Shortlist
Title translated by AI:“The Laws of Nature”
Eiríkur Örn Norðdahl · 45 when first published
Novel · 597 pages · Historical, Satire
AI-generated summary:In early summer 1925 Iceland's youngest, handsomest and most reluctant bishop calls a synod in Ísafjörður to show Christianity's power over superstition, spiritualism and the forces of nature.
Icelandic Literary Prize 2023 · Shortlist
Title translated by AI:“Land of the Night”
Vilborg Davíðsdóttir · 58 when first published
Novel · 329 pages · Historical
AI-generated summary:Over a thousand years ago, Þorgerður leaves her grief in Iceland for Norway and travels with a fur trader to Garðaríki, to join Varangians sailing down the Dnieper with slaves and furs for Constantinople.
Icelandic Literary Prize 2022 · Shortlist
Auður Ava Ólafsdóttir · 64 when first published
Novel · 226 pages · Nature
AI-generated summary:A linguist who specialises in minority languages decides to turn a barren plot of land into a garden of Eden, and the people of a nearby village unexpectedly take an interest in linguistics.
Icelandic Literary Prize 2022 · Shortlist
Title translated by AI:“Strange Lights”
Dagur Hjartarson · 35 when first published
Novel · 118 pages · Speculative, Love
AI-generated summary:A strange roar is heard more and more often on the footbridge over Hringbraut in Reykjavík, mysterious phenomena defy physics, cats disappear, and a young couple falls in love.
Icelandic Literary Prize 2022 · Shortlist
Title translated by AI:“Tools”
Kristín Eiríksdóttir · 41 when first published
Novel · 349 pages
AI-generated summary:At a documentary festival in Stockholm, filmmaker Villa Dúadóttir struggles to answer questions about her film on a whaler called Dimmi, and about the woman she cut out of it.
Icelandic Literary Prize 2022 · Shortlist
Title translated by AI:“The Happiness of This World”
Sigríður Hagalín Björnsdóttir · 48 when first published
Novel · 460 pages · Historical, Politics
AI-generated summary:An exiled history professor accused of misconduct finds an unknown manuscript written in 1479 by an old servant of Ólöf the Rich, the most powerful woman in fifteenth-century Iceland.
Icelandic Literary Prize 2021 · Shortlist
Title translated by AI:“The Clockwork”
Arnaldur Indriðason · 60 when first published
Novel · 315 pages · Historical
AI-generated summary:An Icelandic watchmaker restoring an old clock in the Danish king's palace is visited one evening by the sidelined King Christian VII, and tells him how his father and foster mother were executed.
Icelandic Literary Prize 2021 · Shortlist
Title translated by AI:“Oil”
Fríða Ísberg, Melkorka Ólafsdóttir, Ragnheiður Harpa Leifsdóttir, Sunna Dís Másdóttir, Þóra Hjörleifsdóttir, Þórdís Helgadóttir · Fríða Ísberg 29, Þórdís Helgadóttir 40 when first published
Novel · 182 pages
AI-generated summary:Six women of different ages and backgrounds who will not fit the roles they are given keep breaking old patterns and pouring oil on the fire; each chapter is written by one member of a writers' collective.
Icelandic Literary Prize 2021 · Shortlist
Title translated by AI:“The Light Trap”
Novel · 800 pages · Satire, Politics, Love
AI-generated summary:A mysterious stranger walks into a Reykjavík hotel in midwinter and sweeps the receptionist and poet H.M.S. Hermann into a struggle for power and status that spares no one.
Icelandic Literary Prize 2021 · Shortlist
Title translated by AI:“Feelings Are for Wimps”
Kamilla Einarsdóttir · 42 when first published
Novel · 141 pages · Love, Satire
AI-generated summary:To fend off a midlife crisis that shows itself in endless talk of drains and sewage pipes, Halla gets her friends, all with colourful pasts, to form a metal band with her.
Icelandic Literary Prize 2020 · Shortlist
Title translated by AI:“Inner Nature”
Arndís Þórarinsdóttir · 38 when first published
Poetry · 58 pages
AI-generated summary:Poems on the everyday and the vastness of the world, in which a speaker who has seen Mayan temples and coral reefs realises she has never once seen a hedgehog.
Icelandic Literary Prize 2020 · Shortlist
Dýralíf
Auður Ava Ólafsdóttir · 62 when first published
Novel · 192 pages
AI-generated summary:Just before Christmas, as an unprecedented storm approaches, a Reykjavík midwife living in the flat she inherited from her great-aunt finds the old woman's unfinished manuscripts in a banana box.
Icelandic Literary Prize 2020 · Shortlist
Title translated by AI:“Death of a Forest”
Novel · 180 pages
AI-generated summary:After days of incessant rain a forest slides down a hillside and turns the life of landowner and family man Magnús upside down; soon afterwards, bombs come to light.
Icelandic Literary Prize 2020 · Shortlist
Snerting
Olaf Olafsson · 58 when first published
Novel · 272 pages · Love
AI-generated summary:As the pandemic forces him to close his Reykjavík restaurant, Kristófer receives a friend request that sends him back fifty years to London, and to the people who vanished without saying goodbye.
Icelandic Literary Prize 2019 · Shortlist
Title translated by AI:“Pig's Head”
Bergþóra Snæbjörnsdóttir · 34 when first published
Novel · 236 pages · Family, Migration
AI-generated summary:In the mid-1990s a Chinese mother and son come to Iceland to join a new family whose old sorrows run from one generation to the next.
Icelandic Literary Prize 2019 · Shortlist
Title translated by AI:“The State of the Pound”
Bragi Ólafsson · 57 when first published
Novel · 271 pages · Family
AI-generated summary:In 1976 a widow in her mid-thirties and her teenage son, newly obsessed with music, travel to England to visit an old friend of the dead father on a farm of artists and anarchists south of London.
Icelandic Literary Prize 2019 · Shortlist
Title translated by AI:“Ways to Survive”
Guðrún Eva Mínervudóttir · 43 when first published
Novel · 166 pages
AI-generated summary:Chance brings together a newly widowed woman, an overweight computer man, a young woman with an eating disorder and the eleven-year-old son of a single mother.
Icelandic Literary Prize 2019 · Shortlist
Title translated by AI:“Twilight”
Steinunn Sigurðardóttir · 69 when first published
Poetry · 92 pages · Nature
AI-generated summary:Poems full of striking images of nature that move from a child's wonder at a white, eternal mountain to the uncertainty and change of the present: a love letter to land and glacier.
Icelandic Literary Prize 2018 · Shortlist
Ungfrú Ísland
Auður Ava Ólafsdóttir · 60 when first published
Novel · 256 pages · Historical
AI-generated summary:Reykjavík, 1963: a young woman from the Dalir district arrives with manuscripts in her luggage, wanting to be a writer at a time when poets are men and young women are invited into beauty contests.
Icelandic Literary Prize 2018 · Shortlist
Title translated by AI:“The Stream of Life”
Bergsveinn Birgisson · 47 when first published
Novel · 295 pages · Historical
AI-generated summary:In 1784, after a year of the Laki eruptions, Copenhagen sends a young half-Icelandic scholar of the Enlightenment to the Strandir region to judge whether Icelanders should be moved to Denmark.
Icelandic Literary Prize 2018 · Shortlist
Sálumessa
Gerður Kristný · 48 when first published
Poetry · 101 pages
AI-generated summary:A requiem in verse sung over a woman who took her own life, so that her suffering and her life are not forgotten.
Icelandic Literary Prize 2018 · Shortlist
Title translated by AI:“Autumn Eyes”
Hannes Pétursson · 87 when first published
Poetry · 59 pages · Nature
AI-generated summary:An eleventh collection, the first in twelve years, in which the poet casts autumn eyes over his surroundings and his times, raises urgent matters and remembers departed friends.
Icelandic Literary Prize 2017 · Shortlist
Bergþóra Snæbjörnsdóttir · 32 when first published
Poetry · 111 pages
AI-generated summary:A sequence of poems telling, in the voice of an unreliable narrator, of her life in Berlin and her bond with a fading former punk-rock star called Flórída, while she is questioned by one Herr Fleischer.
Icelandic Literary Prize 2017 · Shortlist
Title translated by AI:“Ásta's Story”
Jón Kalman Stefánsson · 54 when first published
Novel · 443 pages · Family, Love
AI-generated summary:Sigvaldi lies on a concrete pavement as his family's story runs through his mind, above all that of his daughter Ásta, named after a heroine of Laxness before she was born.
Icelandic Literary Prize 2017 · Shortlist
Title translated by AI:“Spiders in Shop Windows”
Kristín Ómarsdóttir · 55 when first published
Poetry · 93 pages
AI-generated summary:Sharp, vivid and unsettling poems in which the everyday turns into fairy tale and dream into horror, until bare reality is revealed.
Icelandic Literary Prize 2017 · Shortlist
Title translated by AI:“A Handbook of Memory and Forgetting”
Ragnar Helgi Ólafsson · 46 when first published
Novel · 170 pages
AI-generated summary:Humour and philosophy mix in a book of letters between former lovers, a strange drive through Reykjavík's suburbs, a bitter residents' dispute and a boy's attempt to run away from the farm.
Icelandic Literary Prize 2016 · Shortlist
Title translated by AI:“Rasputin's Beard”
Guðrún Eva Mínervudóttir · 40 when first published
Novel · 317 pages · Family, Love
AI-generated summary:Eva and Matti have moved from central Reykjavík to a small town, but their problems come with them; then Eva befriends Ljúba, a Russian-speaking market gardener with a colourful family history.
Icelandic Literary Prize 2016 · Shortlist
Title translated by AI:“Poems Remember a Voice”
Sigurður Pálsson · 68 when first published
Poetry · 81 pages
AI-generated summary:Late, personal poems about the elements of life, earth, fire, air and water, and about voices and shadows, light and dark, setting imagination against destruction and death.
Icelandic Literary Prize 2016 · Shortlist
Ég er sofandi hurð
Sjón · 54 when first published
Novel · 528 pages · Speculative
AI-generated summary:Josef Löwe, born in 1962, the year more nuclear bombs were exploded than ever before, remembers everything since he came to life on a basement kitchen table in Reykjavík; the trilogy reaches its final part.
Icelandic Literary Prize 2016 · Shortlist
Title translated by AI:“Everything Goes”
Steinar Bragi · 41 when first published
Short stories · 351 pages · Love
AI-generated summary:Nineteen stories of love in all its forms, in which people search for themselves in airports and remote monasteries, a eunuch in a sultan's harem seeks release, and even the devil finds no peace.
Icelandic Literary Prize 2015 · Shortlist
Stóri skjálfti
Auður Jónsdóttir · 42 when first published
Novel · 298 pages · Family
AI-generated summary:Saga comes round after an epileptic seizure on a pavement beside a busy Reykjavík road to find her three-year-old son gone, and her memory full of holes.
Icelandic Literary Prize 2015 · Shortlist
Title translated by AI:“Seasick in Munich”
Hallgrímur Helgason · 56 when first published
Novel · 325 pages · Autofiction, Coming of age
AI-generated summary:In autumn 1981 a young Icelander who has quit art school in Reykjavík enrols at the Academy of Fine Arts in Munich and lives through a hard first winter away from home.
Icelandic Literary Prize 2015 · Shortlist
Title translated by AI:“The Way Out into the World”
Hermann Stefánsson · 47 when first published
Novel · 89 pages
AI-generated summary:Palli wakes in his bed to an uncanny silence and finds himself alone in the world, in a playful, philosophical variation on Jens Sigsgaard's picture book 'Palle Alone in the World'.
Icelandic Literary Prize 2015 · Shortlist
Eitthvað á stærð við alheiminn
Jón Kalman Stefánsson · 52 when first published
Novel · 351 pages · Family
AI-generated summary:The family saga begun in 'Fish Have No Feet' continues, moving between Norðfjörður in the past and present-day Keflavík by way of the Miðnesheiði heath.
Icelandic Literary Prize 2014 · Shortlist
Title translated by AI:“Three Returned”
Guðbergur Bergsson · 82 when first published
Novel · 214 pages · War, Satire
AI-generated summary:News of the Second World War reaches an isolated place on the southern coast where nothing ever happens, and before long the war and the modern age arrive there with unforeseen consequences.
Icelandic Literary Prize 2014 · Shortlist
Title translated by AI:“Copper Field”
Gyrðir Elíasson · 53 when first published
Short stories · 178 pages · Nature
AI-generated summary:Thirty-two short stories of stillness, solitude and quiet unease: writers who cannot write, journeys, and memories of a childhood that feels strange and heavy.
Icelandic Literary Prize 2014 · Shortlist
Title translated by AI:“Throat”
Kristín Eiríksdóttir · 33 when first published
Poetry · 116 pages · Love
AI-generated summary:Sequences of poems interwoven with the poet's own drawings about connection and disconnection, love and loathing, desire and indifference.
Icelandic Literary Prize 2014 · Shortlist
Title translated by AI:“Velour”
Þórdís Gísladóttir · 49 when first published
Poetry · 51 pages
AI-generated summary:Witty poems about the everyday lives of people today, from mouldy fruit and unreliable promises to shared memories, setting the humdrum against poetry's lofty traditions.
Icelandic Literary Prize 2013 · Shortlist
Novel · 302 pages · Coming of age, Love
AI-generated summary:In a village at the edge of the world in the early 1980s, a twelve-year-old boy spends one year discovering love, loss and the pull of words.
Icelandic Literary Prize 2013 · Shortlist
Title translated by AI:“Honour”
Guðmundur Andri Thorsson · 56 when first published
Novel · 175 pages · Historical
AI-generated summary:One winter evening in 1882 the poet Benedikt Gröndal resolves to quit drinking and dreaming and return to teaching at Reykjavík's Latin School, now ruled by a stern reforming scholar.
Icelandic Literary Prize 2013 · Shortlist
Fiskarnir hafa enga fætur
Jón Kalman Stefánsson · 50 when first published
Novel · 381 pages · Family
AI-generated summary:The story of one family across the twentieth century and into the present, moving between the eastern fjord of Norðfjörður and Keflavík, called the blackest place in Iceland.
Icelandic Literary Prize 2013 · Shortlist
Title translated by AI:“Dísa's Story”
Vigdís Grímsdóttir · 60 when first published
Novel · 384 pages
AI-generated summary:Abused at ten and locked for fifty years in silence, Dísa is finally allowed two months to write by the man who has controlled her, and she uses them to write to the man she has always loved.
Icelandic Literary Prize 2012 · Shortlist
Title translated by AI:“The Exception”
Auður Ava Ólafsdóttir · 54 when first published
Novel · 285 pages · Family, Love
AI-generated summary:On New Year's Eve a woman's husband Flóki comes out and moves in with his namesake and colleague, a fellow mathematician; in the basement lives Perla, a dwarf who works as a marriage counsellor and writer.
Icelandic Literary Prize 2012 · Shortlist
Title translated by AI:“The South Window”
Gyrðir Elíasson · 51 when first published
Novel · 134 pages
AI-generated summary:A writer staying in a friend's summer house near a small village struggles with a novel that refuses to take the shape he wants, while his typewriter stands untouched for days on end.
Icelandic Literary Prize 2012 · Shortlist
Kristín Ómarsdóttir · 50 when first published
Novel · 314 pages · Coming of age
AI-generated summary:Milla is twenty-one and does not know what to do with her life; over three weeks in May love comes and goes, she writes countless letters to her grandmother, and at work she catalogues the ordinary Icelandic family.
Icelandic Literary Prize 2012 · Shortlist
Endimörk heimsins
Sigurjón Magnússon · 57 when first published
Novel · 119 pages · Historical, Politics
AI-generated summary:Autumn 1939 in Sverdlovsk: party officials from Moscow gather in the house where the Tsar was shot in 1918, facing Pyotr Yermakov, the most notorious member of the firing squad.
Icelandic Literary Prize 2011 · Shortlist
Konan við 1000°
Hallgrímur Helgason · 52 when first published
Novel · 400 pages · Historical, War, Family
AI-generated summary:Herbjörg María Björnsson, eighty and bedridden, lives alone in a garage in Reykjavík with a laptop and a hand grenade kept since the war; she books her own cremation and looks back on an extraordinary life.
Icelandic Literary Prize 2011 · Shortlist
Hjarta mannsins
Jón Kalman Stefánsson · 48 when first published
Novel · 363 pages · Love, Coming of age · Himnaríki og helvíti, book 3
AI-generated summary:An old Arabic medical book says the human heart has two chambers, happiness and despair, so that one can love two people at once; the boy of two earlier novels finds that his conscience says otherwise.
Icelandic Literary Prize 2011 · Shortlist
Jarðnæði
Oddný Eir Ævarsdóttir · 39 when first published
Novel · 236 pages · Love, Family
AI-generated summary:A young woman travels with her lover and her brother in search of roots and a home with room for everything at once: love and family life, a lively social life, solitude and peace.
Icelandic Literary Prize 2011 · Shortlist
Jójó
Steinunn Sigurðardóttir · 61 when first published
Novel · 190 pages
AI-generated summary:The second-to-last patient of the day stirs a memory in a doctor; slowly he must face himself and the life he has led while confronting the hardest decision of his career: does everyone have a right to be treated?
Icelandic Literary Prize 2010 · Shortlist
Svar við bréfi Helgu
Bergsveinn Birgisson · 39 when first published
Novel · 123 pages · Love
AI-generated summary:An old farmer writes to the woman he loved, who once offered to take him with her to the city: was he right to choose the farm over love, rather than dig ditches or build barracks for the Americans?
Icelandic Literary Prize 2010 · Shortlist
Title translated by AI:“The Screenplay for Örn Featherby and Jón Magnússon's Film About the Commotion at the Restaurant, by Jenný Alexson”
Bragi Ólafsson · 48 when first published
Novel · 464 pages · Satire
AI-generated summary:Örn Featherby inherits nearly two hundred pairs of shoes from his father, an old sailor in Hull; with his friend Jón, a librarian trained as a film director, he sails to England with a draft screenplay in his luggage.
Icelandic Literary Prize 2010 · Shortlist
Title translated by AI:“The Animals in Saigon”
Sigurður Guðmundsson · 68 when first published
Novel · 228 pages · Autofiction, Love
AI-generated summary:During ten months in Vietnam an artist tries to live without language, leave his own culture behind and live like a wise animal; inside him live a horse who is a poet, a gay swan, an English-speaking gull and a girl philosopher.
Icelandic Literary Prize 2010 · Shortlist
Title translated by AI:“Many Are the Lion's Ears”
Þórunn Erlu-Valdimarsdóttir · 56 when first published
Novel · 324 pages · Crime, Love
AI-generated summary:The glamorous television presenter Guðrún Óðinsdóttir holds many men's fates in her hands; when a man is found with his head shot through, Detective Leó must dig into the dead man's past.
Icelandic Literary Prize 2009 · Shortlist
Title translated by AI:“It Is Still Morning”
Böðvar Guðmundsson · 70 when first published
Novel · 384 pages · Historical, Migration, War
AI-generated summary:In 1936 a young German musician of Jewish descent, Jóhannes Kohlhaas, arrives in Reykjavík after fleeing the Nazis; he adapts quickly, enriches the city's cultural life and finds love as war approaches.
Icelandic Literary Prize 2009 · Shortlist
Title translated by AI:“Among the Trees”
Gyrðir Elíasson · 48 when first published
Short stories · 270 pages
AI-generated summary:Forty-seven short stories of strangeness and dread, loneliness, dreams, journeys, childhood memories and visions of the future, laced with sly humour.
Icelandic Literary Prize 2009 · Shortlist
Góði elskhuginn
Steinunn Sigurðardóttir · 59 when first published
Novel · 191 pages · Love
AI-generated summary:On a cold winter night an Icelander who left the country long ago finds himself outside the home of his first love on Seltjarnarnes; they had seven months together seventeen years ago and have not met since.
Icelandic Literary Prize 2009 · Shortlist
Vilborg Davíðsdóttir · 44 when first published
Novel · 267 pages · Historical, Love
AI-generated summary:Auður, daughter of the Viking chieftain Ketill Flatnose, grows up proud and hot-tempered in the Hebrides; drawn to the monk Gilli and his faith, she is married to Óláfr the White, king of Dublin.
Icelandic Literary Prize 2008 · Shortlist
Álfrún Gunnlaugsdóttir · 70 when first published
Novel · 251 pages
AI-generated summary:Rán, who has lived her whole adult life abroad, leaves her home and husband in Switzerland for Iceland, stopping in Barcelona, where she lived an eventful youth, and faces forgotten moments and lost ideals.
Icelandic Literary Prize 2008 · Shortlist
Skaparinn
Guðrún Eva Mínervudóttir · 32 when first published
Novel · 278 pages
AI-generated summary:Sveinn, a solitary craftsman devoted to making beautiful, finely made sex dolls, helps a woman named Lóa change a tyre outside his window, asks her in, and is drawn into her family troubles while facing his own life.
Icelandic Literary Prize 2008 · Shortlist
Title translated by AI:“Silhouettes from a Journey”
Óskar Árni Óskarsson · 58 when first published
Nonfiction · 134 pages · Family
AI-generated summary:A poet sets out for the scenes of past events to meet vanished times and earlier generations; small images of reality and the past, borrowed texts and photographs form a lyrical memoir and a family history in fragments.
Icelandic Literary Prize 2008 · Shortlist
Rökkurbýsnir
Sjón · 46 when first published
Novel · 271 pages · Historical
AI-generated summary:In 1635, when the earth is still the centre of the universe, the self-taught writer and image-maker Jónas Pálmason the Learned is convicted of spreading witchcraft and exiled to an island, where he looks back on his life.
Icelandic Literary Prize 2007 · Shortlist
Title translated by AI:“Bars of the Mind”
Einar Már Guðmundsson · 53 when first published
Novel · 362 pages · Love, Autofiction, Crime
AI-generated summary:In 2002 a writer receives a letter from a man held on remand, telling his story; three years later, the prisoner just released and the writer out of alcohol treatment, they meet, and a love story emerges.
Icelandic Literary Prize 2007 · Shortlist
Title translated by AI:“Weak Spot”
Gerður Kristný · 37 when first published
Poetry · 47 pages
AI-generated summary:Poems on many subjects, ranging from the deepest feelings to wry remarks on life and existence.
Icelandic Literary Prize 2007 · Shortlist
Title translated by AI:“The Song of the Stone Collector”
Sjón · 45 when first published
Poetry · 47 pages
Icelandic Literary Prize 2007 · Shortlist
Title translated by AI:“Cold Is the Blood of Others”
Þórunn Erlu-Valdimarsdóttir · 53 when first published
Novel · 332 pages · Crime
AI-generated summary:In a cold Reykjavík a raven watches money change hands, cats being run over, houses burned and men shot; when Ása stumbles on a body in a gravel heap in the north, much that was hidden comes to light.
Icelandic Literary Prize 2006 · Shortlist
Title translated by AI:“Pledge of Loyalty”
Auður Jónsdóttir · 33 when first published
Novel · 335 pages · Satire, Migration
AI-generated summary:Gísella Dal lives a life of luxury until she learns that her grandmother's fortune is spent; rather than go to work, she takes in lodgers, and four very different women end up sharing her flat.
Icelandic Literary Prize 2006 · Shortlist
Sendiherrann
Bragi Ólafsson · 44 when first published
Novel · 298 pages · Satire
AI-generated summary:The Icelandic poet Sturla Jón Jónsson travels to a poetry festival in Lithuania, where his country's cultural ambassador must cope with mishaps, unpoetic reality and the criminal who lives in all of us.
Icelandic Literary Prize 2006 · Shortlist
Title translated by AI:“At the Doors of Evening”
Hannes Pétursson · 75 when first published
Poetry · 56 pages
Icelandic Literary Prize 2006 · Shortlist
Title translated by AI:“Godless Men”
Ingunn Snædal · 35 when first published
Poetry · 49 pages · Love, Nature
AI-generated summary:Poems, subtitled reflections on glacial water and love, about love, long drives on country roads and coming home to family in a valley.
Icelandic Literary Prize 2005 · Shortlist
Tími nornarinnar
Árni Þórarinsson · 55 when first published
Novel · 364 pages · Crime
AI-generated summary:Newly moved to Akureyri, the reporter Einar covers a school production at Hólar; on the way back he must report on a woman who fell overboard on a rafting trip, the first of several deaths.
Icelandic Literary Prize 2005 · Shortlist
Title translated by AI:“Stormland”
Hallgrímur Helgason · 46 when first published
Novel · 391 pages · Satire
AI-generated summary:Back in Sauðárkrókur after ten years of study in Germany, the teacher Böddi is fired after making his students spend a night in Grettir's cave; a man of the spirit in a materialist age, he rages against society on his blog.
Icelandic Literary Prize 2005 · Shortlist
Title translated by AI:“Sunshine Horse”
Steinunn Sigurðardóttir · 55 when first published
Novel · 186 pages · Family, Love, Coming of age
AI-generated summary:Two small siblings are left to fend for themselves in a big house on Sjafnargata by parents who are doctors, busy saving other children; when their beloved housekeeper leaves, the girl looks for warmth elsewhere.
Icelandic Literary Prize 2005 · Shortlist
Title translated by AI:“The Raven”
Vilborg Davíðsdóttir · 40 when first published
Novel · 312 pages · Historical
AI-generated summary:Naaja, a young woman raised in an Inuit village in fifteenth-century Greenland, never fits in; branded a witch and driven out, she must survive in the wilderness, where her path crosses that of Norse hunters.
Icelandic Literary Prize 2004 · Shortlist
Kleifarvatn
Arnaldur Indriðason · 43 when first published
Novel · 312 pages · Crime, Politics
AI-generated summary:When the water of Kleifarvatn sinks after an earthquake, a skeleton tied to a radio transmitter with Russian lettering appears on the lakebed, and the investigation leads Erlendur and his colleagues decades back in time.
Icelandic Literary Prize 2004 · Shortlist
Title translated by AI:“The Beatles Manifesto”
Einar Már Guðmundsson · 50 when first published
Novel · 253 pages · Coming of age
AI-generated summary:In the 1960s rock music bursts into the lives of Icelandic schoolchildren and turns them upside down; together with love, it awakens the teenagers to a new awareness of themselves and others.
Icelandic Literary Prize 2004 · Shortlist
Title translated by AI:“A Different Family”
Guðrún Helgadóttir · 69 when first published
Novel · 120 pages · Family
AI-generated summary:Nine-year-old Karen Karlotta, nearly ten, lives through a stretch in which all sorts of things happen in her family.
Icelandic Literary Prize 2004 · Shortlist
Sigfús Bjartmarsson · 49 when first published
Poetry · 202 pages · Satire, Politics
AI-generated summary:Strictly alliterated and rhymed verse that rails against the ills of the world, taking on contemporary Iceland and the morality of the present day as a revolt against prevailing apathy.
Icelandic Literary Prize 2003 · Shortlist
Title translated by AI:“Landscape Is Never Ridiculous”
Bergsveinn Birgisson · 32 when first published
Novel · 206 pages
AI-generated summary:A handful of small-boat fishermen in a dying Icelandic fishing village make tragicomic attempts to find cod, love and God.
Icelandic Literary Prize 2003 · Shortlist
Title translated by AI:“Storm”
Einar Kárason · 48 when first published
Novel · 333 pages · Satire
AI-generated summary:Eyvindur Jónsson Stormur, a blustering storyteller but no great worker, gathers drinkers, hippies, businessmen, publishers, idlers and students abroad around him, until one Christmas season a publisher needs a colourful author.
Icelandic Literary Prize 2003 · Shortlist
Title translated by AI:“Twice-Found Land”
Gyrðir Elíasson · 42 when first published
Poetry · 68 pages · Nature
AI-generated summary:Poems about feelings and the rich inner life of the mind, and above all about nature.
Icelandic Literary Prize 2003 · Shortlist
Skugga-Baldur
Sjón · 41 when first published
Novel · 112 pages · Historical
AI-generated summary:In 1868 a teenage girl with a learning disability, Abba, is found in the hold of a ship stranded off Reykjanes; the naturalist Friðrik takes her in, and after her death he comes into conflict with the parish priest Baldur.
Icelandic Literary Prize 2002 · Shortlist
LoveStar
Andri Snær Magnason · 29 when first published
Novel · 309 pages · Speculative, Satire, Love
AI-generated summary:In a high-tech Iceland, the global corporation LoveStar has marketed death, organised love and built a vast theme park in Öxnadalur; Indriði and Sigríður think they found love on their own until a dreadful letter arrives.
Icelandic Literary Prize 2002 · Shortlist
Mikael Torfason · 28 when first published
Novel · 228 pages · Migration, Politics
AI-generated summary:Samúel, a destitute Icelander living on disability benefits in Denmark, is an outsider gripped by paranoia and bottomless delusions about people, love and sex, driven to the brink by a desperate search for himself, truth and God.
Icelandic Literary Prize 2002 · Shortlist
Title translated by AI:“The Road to Rome”
Pétur Gunnarsson · 55 when first published
Novel · 175 pages · Historical · Skáldsaga Íslands, book 2
AI-generated summary:Two stories intertwine: in the twelfth century all Europe is on the road to Rome to save its souls, while in the twenty-first a young man named Máni hitches his way there.
Icelandic Literary Prize 2002 · Shortlist
Title translated by AI:“Wreath”
Thor Vilhjálmsson · 77 when first published
Novel · 207 pages · Historical
AI-generated summary:Guðmundur the poet grows up in poverty, learns to read while in service with monks, and as a grown man falls in with the great chieftains of thirteenth-century Iceland, among them Sturla Sighvatsson.
Icelandic Literary Prize 2001 · Shortlist
Title translated by AI:“Across the Ebro”
Álfrún Gunnlaugsdóttir · 63 when first published
Novel · 459 pages · War, Historical, Politics
AI-generated summary:Haraldur, one of many young men alarmed by the rise of fascism in the 1930s, goes to Spain to fight for the Republic; growing old in Iceland, he returns in memory to the comrades of the Battle of the Ebro.
Icelandic Literary Prize 2001 · Shortlist
Gæludýrin
Bragi Ólafsson · 39 when first published
Novel · 157 pages
AI-generated summary:A tragicomic novel about people who have to make small but important decisions, where saying yes or no turns out to be far harder than one tends to imagine.
Icelandic Literary Prize 2001 · Shortlist
Title translated by AI:“The Sunshine Bus Is Late Tonight”
Sigfús Bjartmarsson · 46 when first published
Nonfiction · 279 pages
AI-generated summary:An adventurous travel narrative through the backyards of Latin America and the territory of guerrilla fighters, from Mexico through Central America.
Icelandic Literary Prize 2001 · Shortlist
Title translated by AI:“Search for Poem-Time”
Sigurður Pálsson · 53 when first published
Poetry · 70 pages
AI-generated summary:Poems in search of the time of the poem: the moments that matter most in life, shining moments of beauty and longing, written between order and chaos, firm structure and flow.
Icelandic Literary Prize 2000 · Shortlist
Title translated by AI:“Dreams on Earth”
Einar Már Guðmundsson · 46 when first published
Novel · 222 pages · Historical, Family
AI-generated summary:In Iceland in the first half of the twentieth century, a poor family on Sjómannastígur meets economic crisis and tuberculosis, the "white death", with a stubborn will to live as new times begin to dawn.
Icelandic Literary Prize 2000 · Shortlist
Title translated by AI:“A Lecture on Happiness”
Guðrún Eva Mínervudóttir · 24 when first published
Novel · 167 pages · Family
AI-generated summary:A Reykjavík family saga following three generations through childhood, love, grief and triumph.
Icelandic Literary Prize 2000 · Shortlist
Title translated by AI:“The Picture of the World”
Pétur Gunnarsson · 53 when first published
Novel · 182 pages · Historical · Skáldsaga Íslands, book 1
AI-generated summary:Beginning, like a medieval chronicle, with the creation of the world, a novel pauses at turning points in the history of Iceland while its narrator has to face the great questions of existence in his own life.
Icelandic Literary Prize 2000 · Shortlist
Title translated by AI:“The Invisible Woman”
Sigurður Guðmundsson · 58 when first published
Novel · 182 pages · Autofiction
AI-generated summary:Three figures live inside an artist and world traveller, the Man, the Woman and the Casing; for a year they live his life, quarrel over his work and see his life and art through the eyes of three sexes.