Ófeigur Sigurðsson, author of Öræfi: The Wasteland, will be at the University of Texas at Dallas on October 17, in conversation with Shelby Vincent!
Sponsored by the Icelandic Literature Center, with support from Iceland Naturally and Visit Dallas.
Ófeigur Sigurðsson was born in Reykjavík in 1975. He is a graduate of the University of Iceland with a degree in philosophy. He made his poetry debut in 2001 with Skál fyrir skammdeginu (Cheers to the Winter Darkness), and published his first novel, Áferð (Texture), in 2005. Since then, he has published six books of poetry and three novels, in addition to his work as an accomplished translator. Sigurðsson was awarded the European Union Prize for Literature in 2011 for his novel, Jón, making him the first Icelander to receive the prize. His novel Öræfi: The Wasteland was published in Iceland in 2014 to great critical and commercial acclaim, and received the Book Merchant’s Prize in 2014 and the Icelandic Literature Prize in 2015. He currently resides in Antwerp, Belgium.
Shelby Vincent is the managing editor of Translation Review and a lecturer and research associate at the University of Texas at Dallas, where she earned her PhD in Translation Studies. In her free time, she is a literary translator, and has contributed to the translation of Woman Street Artists of Latin America (Manic D Press), as well as translating Carmen Boullosa’s Heavens on Earth. She is currently translating another book by Carmen Boullosa, La virgin y el violen (The Virgin and the Violin).
About the Book
After a grueling solo expedition on the Vatnajökull Glacier, Austrian toponymist Bernhardt Fingerberg returns to civilization, barely alive, and into the care of Dr. Lassi. The doctor, suspicious of his story, attempts to discover his real motives for venturing into the treacherous wastelands of Iceland — but the secrets she unravels may be more dangerous than they’re worth.