Killing in the Deep of Night (1989)

Love, death, the sea: the author interweaves these threads in a stirring story set in Reykjavik’s underworld, revealed through the mouth of a taxi driver. Most of the story takes place in the course of two nights. The first night is characterised by a series of seemingly innocent events, but the darkness conceals a killing; on the second three louts burst into the narrator’s car and force him on an expedition. The journey triggers off the narrator’s memories about his past at sea, violence, death, and the precariousness of life.

A dark vision of human nature, urban anguish seen in Vilhjalmsson’s inimitable, grand literary style.