All My Father's Children (2018)

All My Father's Children (2018)

Some people don’t make life any more complicated for themselves than they have to—they live and let live. But Janus is not one of these people. Upon discovering that he has eleven half-siblings with whom he shares the same father, he embarks on a journey to find all of them, a journey that takes him far and wide across the country. These meetings have mixed results—not everyone’s willing to meet a brother they didn’t even know existed. But Janus doesn’t let that stop him and wanders from one place to another, entering the everyday realities of these unknown relations, all of whom are swimming around in their own worlds like fish in a bowl. A skillfully woven family drama filled with characters the likes of whom rarely find their way into novels, but who nevertheless are surprisingly familiar.

R E V I E W S

“Steinunn has found her voice ​as an author of prose works, and she is an undoubted talent.” EINAR FALUR INGOLFSSON, MORGUNBLADID DAILY

“… at the back of my mind, while writing this book, I had the thought that people are always searching for something. It’s a collective search and many of us do not even know what we are searching for. You can call it a father or a mother. It does not matter. What really matters is the need and the search. In this search you need there to be something in front of you other than the void. Take Janus for example; he is frightened of the open sky and finds it difficult to look up into it. It is a terrifying thought how empty space is while at the same time it is full of things unknown to us.” STEINUNN G. HELGADOTTIR, interviewed by Magnus Gudmundsson, Frettabladid daily