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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.
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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
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 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
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 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 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
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 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 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 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 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
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 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 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 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 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 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.