Authors
Auður Ava Ólafsdóttir
About the author
Auður A. Ólafsdóttir was born in Reykjavík in 1958. She is a lecturer in history of art at the University of Iceland. She has worked as an art historian, and taught history of art, e.g. at the Icelandic Drama School, and has been director of the University of Iceland Art Collection. She has curated art exhibitions, and written about art and art history in various media.
Auður is the author of three novels. The first, Upphækkuð jörð/Raised Earth, was published in 1998 by Mál og menning. Rigning í nóvember/Rain in November, published by Salka in 2004, won the Tómas Guðmundsson literary prize, and was nominated for a DV Culture Award. Afleggjarinn/The Cutting, published in 2007, won the DV Culture Award for literature and the Fjöruverðlaun, a women's literary prize. The book was recently nominated for the Nordic Council Literature Award.
Auður has been universally praised for her uniquely hypnotic style and artistic approach. She grips the reader by presenting believable characters who have to cope with unexpected and often comic situations, and she constantly takes the reader by surprise. Publishing rights to Afleggjarinn/The Cutting have been sold in Denmark, and many publishers have shown an interest in the book, in the Nordic countries and elsewhere in Europe.
Auður's middle initial A stands for her Catholic baptismal name Ava, the name of a blind medieval saint.
Publisher: Salka
Further reading:
Fiction
Novels:
Afleggjarinn, 2007: Salka
Denmark: Athene
France, Rosa candida, 2010: Zulma
Germany: Suhrkamp
U.S.A., The Greenhouse, 2011: Amazon Crossing
Rigning í nóvember, 2004 Salka
Upphækkuð jörð, 1998: Mál og menning
Poetry:
Sálmurinn um glimmer, 2010: Salka