Sixty Kilos of Knockouts (2021)

“Hallgrimur Helgason’s novel is an imposing, powerful and imaginative work, rendered with a pithy and inventive brilliance, that views through a satirical, hyperbolic lens a series of tragic events where life and death hang in the balance at every turn. ... Sixty Kilos of Knockouts is an ambitious novel that engages with a reality where one’s fate is determined by one’s origins and external circumstances together with sheer luck, good and bad.”

“The author's strengths are on full display in the dazzling and laconic world of the herring factory floor, where a nation's first steps out of turf huts reflect the protagonist's desire for a better life and independence. A fish factory waltz where humor and heartbreak come together in the ruthless onslaught of time. This doesn't feel like a standalone sequel to the award-winning work, but rather stands entirely on its own two feet.”

Four and a half stars of five possible “Hallgrimur Helgason has certainly not let his fans down. His book Sixty Kilos of Knockouts is a followup to the award-winning Sixty Kilos of Sunshine (2018), which is no less brilliant. …You can’t help but be dazzled by the work that went into this chronicle of an era. The road forward for Icelanders took them out of their turf huts into wood frame houses, and Hallgrimur truly hits his stride in portraying the journey. …Hallgrimur has garnered well-deserved praise for his social commentary and the sometimes grim but always compelling pictures he paints of life in Segulfjördur/Siglufjördur at the beginning of the 20th century. Although these are truly brilliant portrayals of society, they are also portrayals of family life, of small human victories and defeats, not to mention Gestur’s own personal evolution. To my mind this is every bit as much a story of individuals. Gestur’s struggle with fatherhood in all its various forms is true to his childhood experience, which we learned about in the first book, and the speculations about his own paternity that pervaded his upbringing. These conflicts are no less dramatic in the personal sphere and must not be overlooked when sizing up Hallgrimur’s latest accomplishment. This is a love story, a coming-of-age story and a family drama as much as it is a story of a society, and the storms of the human soul along with its sunny days are something Hallgrimur manages to conjure up in this book with remarkable insight. Hallgrímur is an old-school author, reminiscent of Laxness, or even Dickens, of people who write large stories in every sense of the word and don’t hesitate to render the drama in lengthy, unbroken blocks of texts. … This book is not a lesser work than its award-winning predecessor, and this series that Hallgrimur has begun is imbued with that quality that once you start, you can’t help but want to hear more.”

“One of our big name writers... this is a series of accounts, epic in its way... he really builds to full steam by the middle of the book and carries it through to the end...”

“... full of spirit …”

“The style of the work is a rapid prose, really like a stormy sea… In truth it is reminiscent in many ways of Charles Dickens. But within the onslaught of physicality and the grotesque are echoes both of the renowned medieval novel by the French author Rabelais about the giant Gargantua, and of Hallgrimur’s previous works such as 101 Reykjavik. The book also evokes Icelandic literary tradition… The work is crammed with little tales of the bizarre, and the main narrative, about Gestur, is gripping. And while there is plenty of poverty and adversity, the narrator cheers the reader with his humour and wordplay. The narrator is in fact very helpful, and the work is very accessible and comfortable in the sense that the reader gets to hear about the fate of all the characters they have taken a liking to. Thus the work fulfils all the requirements for a good book series – and at the end there is no doubt that the narrator intends to allow the reader to meet Gestur again in new adventures.”

“The joy of story-telling does not disappoint the reader in Sixty Kilos of Knockouts. It contains everything that can spice up a story: love, sex, politics, money, betrayal, struggle, a ship run ashore, murder and much more, that is woven together into Hallgrimur’s incredible narrative…”