News
Success for Gerður Kristný's Garden
Norwegian publishing house Bokvennen has purchased the rights to Garðurinn/The Garden, Gerður Kristný's bestseller published last year. Gerður Kristný thus rubs shoulders with such literary giants as poet Steinn Steinarr and medieval scholar Snorri Sturluson, whose works are published in Norway by the same company. Rights to the book have also been sold to Bloomsbury/Berlin Verlag in Germany.
The Garden is a thriller with supernatural overtones for readers aged 11 to 15. Eyja is a young girl who moves into a big house by a churchyard in Reykjavík. An old leather chair is bought for the family's new home, but Eyja immediately senses something sinister about the chair. And it transpires that hidden in the chair are letters written in 1918, when an influenza epidemic raged all over Europe, including Iceland. Eyja's feeling that something is wrong is reinforced when her father falls gravely ill; and she plunges into an exciting investigation, to solve the puzzle and save the day.
Gerður Kristný has just returned home from Lahti in Finland, where she took part in an international writers' reunion. She read from her works, and also chaired a panel discussion on the final evening of the reunion. She humorously remarked that she was from the land of ice, fire and financial chaos, and asked the audience for any small change: her joke was well-received, and was reported in the Finnish media.