International Authors Book Club

Read an author of your choosing from a predetermined country. October's nation is Iceland.

We will meet each third Thursday of the month to discuss your author, their works, and any themes they explore. 

To get you started, check out our list of a few literary award-winning Icelandic authors with some details about their writings. These fiction books are available through your Santa Fe Public Library.

Suggested Authors:

Arnaldur Indriðason, author of Jar City, Reykjavik Nights and The Shadow District

Considered one of the best Scandinavian crime fiction writers, 10 of the books in Indridason’s Detective Erlendur series have been translated into English. Indridason’s stories are atmospheric and at times very dark, often touching on serious issues within society. Jar City begins the Erlendur series while Reykjavik Nights is a prequel from Erlendur's youth as a traffic cop. The Shadow District (2017) starts his new Reykjavik Wartime Mystery series.

Halldór Laxness, author of The Atom Station, Iceland’s Bell and Under The Glacier

Halldór Laxness won the 1955 Nobel Prize for Literature for his body of work and reputation as the most creative Icelandic writer of the 20th century.

His works were blacklisted in the U.S. after publication of The Atom Station (1948) about the differing regional reaction when a NATO base is built in northern Iceland.

Auður Ava Ólafsdóttir, author of The Greenhouse

This is a gentle but quirky book, about love, growing up, assuming responsibility and finding one’s place in life. Lobbi, a young man just leaving for a new job, experiences a chain of life changing events including the death of his mother and unexpected fatherhood for himself, but as he focuses on the cultivation of a rare eight-petaled rose he learns how to adjust to his new life and to cultivate love.

Yrsa Sigurdardóttir, author of Last Rituals and The Legacy

The six-book Thora Gudmundsdóttir series, starting with Last Rituals, features a smart lawyer and investigator whose hunt for a modern murderer suddenly points to a very odd—and evil—chapter in Iceland's past. The Legacy starts the acclaimed Children's House series of police procedurals featuring detective Huldar and Freyja, a child psychologist.

Sjón, author of Moonstone: The Boy Who Never Was

Evoking the moment when Iceland's saga culture met the new narrative form of the cinema and when the isolated island became swept up in the 1918 Spanish flu epidemic. This is the story of a misfit transformed by his experiences in a world where life and death, reality and imagination, secrets and revelations jostle for dominance.

Unknown, author of Njal's Saga

Written in the late 13th century, it is the most popular of the great Icelandic Family Sagas and teems with memorable and complex characters such as Gunnar of Hlidarendi, a great warrior with an aversion to killing, the Lago-like Mord Valgardsson, and the wise Njal himself. Njal's Saga explores perennial human problems: from failed marriages to divided loyalties, from the law's inability to curb human passions to when decent men and women are swept up in a tide of violence.

For disability accommodations, please contact Programs Manager for SFPL at 505-955-6786 or 505-955-2817.