Mamutschka (2015)

Marianne Kowalew, known fondly as Mamutschka, was born in the Russian Empire and grew up in poverty on a farm. Later, she moved to Vilnius, competed with the most beautiful woman in the world for one of the richest available bachelors, and then fled with him to Frankfurt during the bombings of the Second World War. There she opened a restaurant that offered particularly adventurous dishes. The reputation of her spectacular feasts spread far and wide, attracting guests both prominent and proletariat. For years, Halldor Gudmundsson regularly travelled to Frankfurt for the Book Fair and while there, he always visited Mamutschka at her restaurant. They became close friends and he wanted to chronicle her eventful life. But it would turn out to be a tall order to write the biography of a woman who had always preferred to decide for herself what would be on the menu... A warm and entertaining narrative of the unusual friendship of a man from Iceland and an old woman from Central Europe. Halldor Gudmundsson won the Icelandic Literature Prize for his biography of Icelandic Nobel Prize winner Halldor Laxness.

• Nominated for the Icelandic Women‘s Literature Prize