mánasteinn

We always enjoy—albeit too often only vicariously and not as active readers who’ve done the assignment beforehand—listening to episodes of the BBC World Book Club and are usually drawn in, intrigued to add a new title to the pile, by a thoroughgoing discussion that some might call spoilers but strike me more as insights from the author. A recent instalment featuring poet, lyricist and novella-writer Sigurjón “Sjón” Birgir Sigurðsson, sometimes collaborator with The Sugarcubes and Björk and his now very timely 2013 work Mánasteinn: drengurinn sem aldrei var til (Moonstone: The Boy Who Never Was) about identity, otherness and escapism through cinema in Reykjavík just as the nation is granted independence and the island is visited by the 1918 Influenza Pandemic. Visit the link up top to listen to the programme and learn what’s next on their reading list.