Dot Dot Comma Dash (1976)

With his rich imagery and brilliantly witty style, the author shows a profound understanding of modern Icelandic society.

Petur Gunnarsson's debut novel, Dot Dot Comma Dash was exceedingly well-received by readers and critics alike on its publication in 1976. A year later, it was added to the reading lists of many Icelandic schools, and from there quickly whisked into the canon of Icelandic literature. The book introduced Andri Haraldsson to Icelandic readers, who avidly followed the young protagonist's coming of age in postwar Iceland – a journey that would eventually span four books.

The Andri novels introduced the voice of young Icelanders growing up in the city – or “on the gravel,” to use the Icelandic metonymic term – with urban life as their central experience. The book's supple and evocative prose, in turn, was particularly well-suited to describing to the new kind of reality postwar Icelanders found themselves in.

The last book about Andri, Sagan öll (Finale), was nominated for the Nordic Council's Literature Prize in 1987.

A film based on the book by Thorsteinn Jonsson also became highly popular in Iceland.

WDR2's book of the year, 2011

“Petur‘s insight is based on a dialectic coalescence of panoramas and close-ups, in a good sense – extreme wide-angle and extreme close-up. For instance, the Earth as viewed from space, versus a candy wrapper.” SIGURDUR PALSSON WRITER, IN AN ESSAY COLLECTION PUBLISHED ON THE OCCASION OF PETUR GUNNARSSON‘S 60TH BIRTHDAY