Wastelands - A Novel (2014)

“Frightfully brilliant…One of the most interesting and remarkable novels of the year.”

“Wastelands is like the highlands – unlike anything.”

“It’s a wild ride, unlike anything you’ve read.”

“It’s a brilliant, ecstatic, hallucinatory arabesque consisting of nested tales of decreasing reliability and increasing self-awareness—all centering upon this blasted Icelandic emptiness where having or knowing anything seems only barely possible, where one glimpses the struggle to verify the contents of the world in bleakest terms.”

“… filled with morsels of wisdom, and the author’s insight into the soul of the Icelandic nation is phenomenal. … contains strong criticism of those attitudes underpinning boundless utilitarianism, unlimited tourism, and the Klondike madness that has infiltrated modern-day Iceland as a result of tourism. The novel’s message is that tourism has more in common with catastrophe than progress, that it turns everything into a wasteland like the volcanic eruptions in the glacier. … Much is beautifully done in this latest work by Ófeigur Sigurdsson. He makes deft references to the paragons of world literature, even in his most outlandish descriptions, such as when Bernhardur loses one of his buttocks like Cunégonde in Voltaire’s Candide. There are also many references to El Dorado, the magic valley where wild livestock and giant rams rule, as if conjured from the imagination of Bjartur of Sumarhus. Also, more sombrely, the author refers to the sale of the land, which in many ways is reminiscent of another work by Halldór Laxness, The Atom Station. … an absolute boon. This work categorically puts him among the most noteworthy and original authors of his generation.”