Dog Days (2015)

Dog Days is a story about people, Icelandic and foreign; about places, familiar and strange; about ideas, good and bad; about events, unimportant and momentous; about ambition, trouble, failure, and weakness; about men who reach for the stars and across the globe, too; about love and passion —about the threads that bind the ages together.

Drawing on source material about Jørgen Jørgensen, the so-called “Dog Days King” of Iceland, Reverend Jon Steingrimsson, the “Pastor of Fire” who experienced the Laki volcanic eruption firsthand, and others from bygone eras, this sparklingly entertaining novel travels far and wide through time and space. Historical facts have their place, but the creative muse is close at hand, as is the joyful spirit of storytelling that leads the reader on an adventure through the past.

• The Icelandic Literary Prize 2015 • 21st Century Best Foreign Novels 2016, China • Zou Taofen Foreign Novel of the Year 2016, China

R E V I E W S

“Four and a half stars (out of five) Deep joy of storytelling Gudmundsson’s book is part history, part novel, and in that respect is procedurally similar to the Frenchman Laurent Binet’s book HHhH about Reinhardt Heydrich, which was published in an Icelandic version last year. Gudmundsson has correctly judged Jörgensen to be one of the few characters from Iceland’s history who is not only adequately documented but also enough of an enigma to be able to withstand such examination. In short, the methodology consists of combining the historian’s strict reliance on sources with the novelist’s joy of storytelling. And so deep is Gudmundsson’s joy of narration that before you know it the weekend is gone and the book finished. He uses Jörgensen’s story as an opportunity not only to examine world history of the period, from discoveries in the Pacific Ocean to the Napoleonic wars, but also to revitalise the history of Iceland. ...

An incredible life story ... Wandering the world in the wake of the Napoleonic wars, Jörgensen gets a golden opportunity to capture happiness, but then loses everything again (perhaps he was a true Icelander after all). Time and again the characters bump into one another just as they do in the novels of the period, reminding us that while the world may have been a bigger place as far as distances go, there were far fewer people about and the opportunities for coincidence therefore greater ... Here we have a very entertaining History of Iceland. … Valur Gunnarsson, DV