Description

‘Magical and disturbing’ Adam Thirlwell

An astonishing, mind-bending novel about a woman discovering a community of swan-people from one of Iceland’s greatest writers.

*SHORTLISTED FOR THE ICELANDIC WOMEN’S LITERATURE PRIZE*

In the not-too-distant future, a young spy named Elisabet Eva is about to discover something that will upend her life.

Elisabet likes to take long solitary walks near the lake. One day, she sees two creatures emerging from the water, half-human, half-swan. She follows them through tangles of thickets into a strange new reality.

Pulled into the monomaniacal, and often violent, quest of the swanfolk, Elisabet finds her own mind increasingly untrustworthy. Soon, she is forced to reckon with the consequences of her involvement with these unusual beings, and a past life she has been trying to evade.

‘Omarsdottir’s skills as a poet and playwright are evident’ Helen Oyeyemi, New York Review of Books

Publisher Review

'Magical and disturbing' Adam Thirlwell -- Adam Thirlwell A wild adventure... Omarsdottir's novel is kaleidoscopic; the more you look at it, the more you see. * Lucy Writers * One of the most original authors in contemporary Icelandic literature...known for subverting traditional binaries like fantasy and realism, feminine and masculine, good and evil, and the animal and the human. * Ord um baekur * One of [this country's] most respected authors. -- Egill Helgason * Kiljan * A master of the unexpected. -- Steingerdur Steinsdottir * Vikan *