Description

‘Wildly original, morose, uproarious… It is also one of the funniest books ever written’ Susan Sontag

A naive young man is sent by the bishop of Iceland to investigate a small town that has reportedly lost its faith. The church is boarded up and the errant pastor lives with a woman who is not his wife. He has also allowed a corpse to be lodged in the glacier. So the rumours go.

What he discovers is a community that regards itself as the centre of the world – earthly yet otherworldly, banal yet astonishing. Brimming with humour, mystery, and the supernatural this is a surprising and moving novel from the Nobel Prize-winning Icelandic author.

WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY SUSAN SONTAG

Publisher Review

This is a novel of immense charm... It's a book of ideas, like no other Laxness ever wrote -- Susan Sontag Under the Glacier is hilarious, in a deadpan, northern-edge-of-the-world sort of way -- Andrew O'Hehir * Salon * Whimsical... deliriously funny... impishly chaotic * Kirkus Reviews * Under the Glacier is a journey to the center of Laxness's antic imagination, and it is well worth the trip -- Vincent Czyz * The Arts Fuse *