Names for the sea strangers in Iceland

Novelist Sarah Moss had a childhood dream of moving to Iceland, sustained by a wild summer there when she was nineteen. In 2009, she saw an advertisement for a job at the University of Iceland and applied on a whim, despite having two young children and a comfortable life in an English cathedral cit...

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Main Author: Moss, Sarah.
Format: Books Print Book
Language: English
Published: Berkeley, Calif. : Counterpoint, 2013.
Subjects:
Summary: Novelist Sarah Moss had a childhood dream of moving to Iceland, sustained by a wild summer there when she was nineteen. In 2009, she saw an advertisement for a job at the University of Iceland and applied on a whim, despite having two young children and a comfortable life in an English cathedral city. The resulting adventure was shaped by Iceland's economic collapse, which halved the value of her salary, by the eruption of Eyjafjallajokull and by a collection of new friends, including a poet who saw the only bombs fall on Iceland in 1943, a woman who speaks to elves and a chef who guided Sarah's family around the intricacies of Icelandic cuisine. Sarah was drawn to the strangeness of Icelandic landscape, and explored hillsides of boiling mud, volcanic craters and fissures, and the unsurfaced roads that link remote farms and fishing villages in the far north. She walked the coast path every night after her children were in bed, watching the northern lights and the comings and goings of migratory birds. As the weeks and months went by, the children settled in local schools and Sarah got to know her students and colleagues, she and her family learned new ways to live.
Physical Description: 358 pages ; 21 cm
ISBN: 9781619021228 (paperback)
1619021226 (paperback)
Author Notes: Sarah Moss is a novelist, travel writer and academic. She teaches Creative Writing in the English Department at University College Dublin and is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. Moss has written seven novels, Ghost Wall , The Tidal Zone , Signs for Lost Children , Bodies of Light , Night Waking , and Cold Earth . Ghost Wall was shortlisted for the RSL Ondaatje Prize and the Polari Prize, and longlisted for the Women's Prize, and The Tidal Zone , Signs for Lost Children , and Bodies of Light were shortlisted for the Wellcome Book Prize, in 2017, 2016 and 2015 respectively.