History. A Mess.

By Sigrún Pálsdóttir

A young PhD student believes she has uncovered the first professional female artist in Britain. It's a discovery that could transform her career and reputation. However, in her haste to break new ground, she has made a simple mistake which threatens everything - and she won't acknowledge her error until it's far too late. As she goes to ever greater lengths to protect her work from the truth, she begins to lose her grip on her thesis, her life and ultimately her sanity. History. A Mess. is a remarkable exploration of intellectual integrity and denial, and a gripping and satirical portrait of academic ambition.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Peirene Press
• Release date: Feb 16, 2023
• ISBN: 9781908670762

Sigrún Pálsdóttir

Sigrún Pálsdóttir completed a PhD in the History of Ideas at the University Oxford in 2001, after which she was a research fellow and lecturer at the University of Iceland. She worked as the editor of Saga, the principal peer-reviewed journal for Icelandic history, from 2008 to 2016. Her previous titles include the historical biography Thora. A Bishop’s Daughter and Uncertain Seas, a story of a young couple and their three children who were killed when sailing from New York to Iceland aboard a ship torpedoed by a German submarine in 1944. Sigrún’s work has been nominated for the Icelandic Literary Prize, Icelandic Women’s Literature Prize, Hagþenkir Non-fiction Prize, and the DV Culture Prize. Uncertain Seas was chosen the best biography in 2013 by booksellers in Iceland. Her novel, History. A Mess, is also available from Open Letter.

Reviews for History. A Mess.

[japaul22 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

I found this novel on a list of recent English translations by women authors and I'm so glad I did. Pálsdóttir packs a lot into this brief novel about a young woman whose life unravels after finding that eight years of work towards a doctoral thesis seems to be founded on a mistake. The narrator (I don't recall ever learning her name) has been studying a diary from the 1600s, believed to be written by S.B., painter of a famous portrait. Little is known about this "S.B." until the narrator stumbles upon a diary entry that makes it seem the portraitist is a woman. She builds her thesis on this discovery and towards the end of writing her 600 pages she discovers that she missed an entry that was mistakenly labeled with the same date. This entry suggests to her that she was wrong and S.B. was actually a man, negating all of her work. This discovery leads to a surrealist account of a descent into madness and despair. There are confused, dream-like episodes paired with moments of harsh reality. This book won't be for everyone but I really loved it.