Summer Light, and Then Comes the Night: A Novel

Written by Jón Kalman Stefánsson

Narrated by Ulf Bjorklund

A NEW YORK TIMES GLOBETROTTING PICK!

Sometimes, in small places, life becomes bigger.

SUMMER LIGHT AND THEN COMES THE NIGHT is a profound and playful masterwork from one of Iceland’s most beloved authors that explores the dreams and desires of ordinary people in a rural town.

In a village of only four hundred inhabitants, life could seem unremarkable. Yet in this remote town, a new road to the city has change on everyone’s minds.

There is the beautiful, elusive Elisabet who cuts a surprisingly svelte path at The Knitting Company. Neighbors Kristin and Kjartan who seem…normal, but for their explosive passion that bewilders even themselves (and ignites the spectacular revenge of Kjartan’s wife). And then the most successful businessman in town decides to ditch his Range Rover and glamorous wife in exchange for Latin books and stargazing.

Unexpected, warm, and humorous, Stefansson explores the dreams and desires of these everyday people, and reveals the magic of life in all of its progress, its complacency, its ugliness and, ultimately, beauty.

AN INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER AND WINNER OF THE ICELANDIC LITERATURE PRIZE

• Language: English
• Publisher: HarperAudio
• Release date: Sep 7, 2021
• ISBN: 9780063136496

Jón Kalman Stefánsson

Jón Kalman Stefánsson’s novels have been nominated three times for the Nordic Council Prize for Literature and his novel Summer Light, and Then Comes the Night received the Icelandic Prize for Literature in 2005. In 2011 he was awarded the prestigious P. O. Enquist Award. His books include Heaven and Hell; The Sorrow of Angels, longlisted for the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize; The Heart of Man, winner of the Oxford-Weidenfeld Translation Prize; and Fish Have No Feet, which was longlisted for the Man Booker International Prize. He lives in Reykjavík, Iceland.

Reviews for Summer Light, and Then Comes the Night

[amy · Rating: 1 out of 5 stars]

DNF. Rambling stories about nothing. There are some lyrical musings but very few.

[anniemod · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

If you expect a conventional novel, look elsewhere - "Summer Light, and Then Comes the Night" is anything but. It has a weird narrator (an almost omnipresence of a type (although it does not know everything so not exactly) but with a "we" voice which reads more like a chorus from a classic play than anything else) and it is a more of a collection of stories with connecting episodes (from that narrator voice) than an actual novel. Add the jumps in time between the different chapters/stories (the last one is not the last one chronological) and it almost does not feel like a novel. And yet, it somehow does - those connections and the references between the parts and the characters which show up in multiple parts. Maybe a better word would be chronicle or saga (although these tend to go chronologically) so that is not the correct type either. It is all of them and none of them... The novel is the story of a small village in Iceland in the late 1980s (for the main story), filled with people who appear to be normal but as everyone else have something interesting in their life. A man who starts dreaming in Latin and decides to leave his work as the director of the local Knitting company and to become an astronomer. The company itself, existing only because it was needed by someone so he is reelected, ends up closing and leaving a lot of people in the small village unemployed; a man comes home after having vowed never to do that; love and lust gets exposed in ways noone expects. Each part adds more details to a story we thought we knew, adding missing pieces, clarifying, connecting. And somewhere in all that emerges the story of a village which is very Icelandic, very normal... and not normal at all. It is the village that emerges as the main character - all the people in it are the supporting cast which makes it alive. I suspect that this novel won't be for everyone - between the narrator style, the disjointed narrative and the somewhat uneven parts (but then, not everyone's life can be interesting), it is a weird novel. I still cannot decide if I liked it a lot or if it annoyed me - but I am glad I read it and I am interested in exploring other books by the author. Plus a non-crime Icelandic novel was an interesting way to see Iceland.

[reluctanttechie · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

An interesting portrait of a village with a large dose of sexuality. At times, it was difficult to keep the various characters straight, partially because of the unfamiliarity of the Icelandic names.

[desiree_reads · Rating: 1 out of 5 stars]

This novel started off strong and lively - I loved the energy. However, at about 19% I started to feel like the book was simply babbling and rambling on with no real point to where it was going. Also, just as a side note, I did find the two anti-American comments included (even at only 19%) very off-putting.

[huizenga-1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Het leven van een aantal bewoners in een klein dorp in IJsland

[dokr_1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

The best book I read last year. Got it from the library and bought it myself afterwards. Amazing book. Engliosh version is called: "Summer Light and Then Comes the Night"