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WINNER OF THE SWEDISH ACADEMY’S NORDIC PRIZE 2023

Winner of the Nordic Council Literature Prize

‘Enchantingly poetic . . . spellbinding . . . magical . . . exceptional’ Independent

On a stark Icelandic mountainside, the imposing Reverend Baldur Skuggason hunts an elusive blue vixen for her near-mythical pelt. The treacherous journey across snow and ice will push his physical and mental endurance to the limit.

In Baldur Skuggason’s parish, a young woman with Down’s Syndrome is buried. After being found shackled to the timbers of a shipwreck in 1868, she was rescued by the naturalist Fridrik B. Fridjonsson. Now he will open the package she always carried with her, hoping to solve the puzzle of her origins.

As the ice begins to melt, the mystery surrounding the trio’s connected fates is unravelled in this spellbinding fable, an exquisite tale of metamorphosis by one of Iceland’s most acclaimed writers.

‘A magical novel’ Bjoerk

‘Describes its world with brilliant, precise, concrete colour and detail… Comic and lyrical.’AS Byatt, The Times

Publisher Review

'Enchantingly poetic . . . spellbinding . . . magical . . . exceptional' * Independent * 'A magical novel' * Bjoerk * 'Describes its world with brilliant, precise, concrete colour and detail... Comic and lyrical.' * A.S. Byatt, The Times * 'A taut, poetic and beautifully judged fable.' * TLS * 'Wondrous . . . with a strange black humour at its core.' * Dazed & Confused *