News
Bankster in German
The German publisher Frankfurter Verlagsanstalt (FVA) has bought the translation rights of the novel Bankster by Guðmundur Óskarsson, which Ormstunga published in 2009. The German edition is due to appear in the fall of 2011. Óskarsson received the Icelandic Literary Prize for the novel in 2009.
According to FVA's publisher, Dr. Joachim Unseld, Bankster fits the firm's publishing policy perfectly. FVA is a well established and respected firm, publishing few but well chosen titles each year, with a special focus on talented and promising new authors. During the past few years, the firm has drawn attention to itself for discovering idiosyncratic new literary voices, German and foreign, and for fighting back against literature's growing tendency towards a “short shelf-life” in the market.
Óskarsson will find himself in good company, as FVA's roster includes the likes of Bodo Kirchhoff, Ernst-Wilhelm Händler, Thomas von Steinaecker, Marion Poschmann, Christoph Peters and Zoë Jenny, while older authors represented include Arno Schmidt, Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes.
Bankster tells the story of a young banker who loses his job as Iceland's economy comes crashing down around his ears, during the catastrophic winter when Icelandic PM Geir H. Haarde famously asked God to bless Iceland. The novel's narrative voice is complex, subdued and sometimes poetic, resulting in “an extremely well written book,” to quote reviewer Ásgeir H. Ingólfsson.
For more information on Guðmundur Óskarsson, see his Author of the Month feature on Sagenhaftes Island, which appeared earlier this year.