Fish Have No Feet

Written by Jon Kalman Stefansson

Narrated by Saul Reichlin

Keflavik: a town that has been called the darkest place in Iceland, surrounded by black lava fields, hemmed in by a sea that may not be fished. Its livelihood depends entirely on a U.S. military base, a conduit for American influences that shaped Icelandic culture and ethics from the 1950s to the dawning of the new millennium.

It is to Keflavik that Ari - a writer and publisher - returns from Copenhagen at the behest of his dying father, two years after walking out on his wife and children. He is beset by memories of his youth, spent or misspent listening to Pink Floyd and the Beatles, fraternising with American servicemen - who are regarded by the locals with a mixture of admiration and contempt - and discovering girls. There is one girl in particular he could never forget - her fate has stayed with him all his life.

Lost in grief and nostalgia, he is also caught up in the story of how his grandparents fell in love in Nordfjordur on the eastern coast, a fishing village a world away from modern Keflavik, at time when the old ways still held sway. Their tragic love affair unfolded against the backdrop of Iceland's harsh nature and unforgiving elements.

Fish have no Feet is at once the story of a singular family and an epic of Icelandic history and culture. It offers an unique insight into modern Iceland, and the ways in which it has been shaped by outside influences. A sparkling novel of love, pain, loss and lifelong desire that marries the poetic, elemental style of Heaven and Hell, The Sorrow of Angels and The Heart of Man to a modern frame of reference and sensibility.

(P)2016 W F Howes Ltd

• Language: English
• Publisher: Quercus
• Translator: Philip Roughton
• Release date: Aug 25, 2016
• ISBN: 9780857057037

Jon Kalman Stefansson

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 includeHeaven 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.

[charl08-1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Wonderfully meandering book rooted in Keflavik, a small community trying to recover in the present from the departure of an American airbase and the sale of fishing rights. Stepping back into family histories of fishing, families and emigration, love stories and terrible losses. Peppered with philosophical musings on identity, motherhood and knowing each other, alongside the dark humour of the unlikeliest restaurant name, obsessions with Revolver and the power of teen love. Unlike anything else I've read.