Home | Books By Year | Books from 2011


Konan vi 1000

Buy Konan vi 1000 now from Amazon

First, read the Wikipedia article. Then, scroll down to see what other TopShelfReviews readers thought about the book. And once you've experienced the book, tell everyone what you thought about it.

Wikipedia article




)

'Konan vi 1000: Herbjrg Mara Bjrnsson segir fr' ('The Woman at 1000: As Told by Herbjrg Mara Bjrnsson') is a historical novel by Hallgrmur Helgason, published in Reykjavk in 2011 by JPV.

Summary



Helgason's main character, Herra, is an eighty-year-old bedridden woman, living alone in a garage along with her laptop and an old German hand grenade from World War II. She has decided to die before Christmas, and has opted for a cremation (thus the thousand degrees). She even makes an appointment for herself at the local crematorium, and while she awaits her death, she recounts her turbulent life, that took her from her remote Icelandic childhood fjord over to Copenhagen before the war, then on to Germany of the war, back to Iceland, then to Argentina, and around the world.

Though based on a real life, the book is a clear work of fiction. Helgason uses fictional freedom to tell an incredible story, but builds his work around historical facts and uses the presidential figure of the grandfather to write about Iceland's destiny in the twentieth century. As the author did not change the name of the president, it was evident that he was writing about the Bjrnsson's family. This caused a stir in Iceland when the book was published. Some family members threatened to stop publication and tried to interfere when the book was nominated for the Nordic Council Literature Prize in 2013.

Historical basis



'The Thousand Degree Woman' (in some countries titled The Woman at 1000) is based on the real life of Brynhildur Georga Bjrnsson, an Icelandic woman whom Helgason accidentally met over the telephone in 2006, when he was aiding his ex-wife during an election campaign, getting people to vote for the Social Democratic Party. Ms. Bjrnsson died in 2007 but had published her biography in 1983. Her father had also published his biography in 1988. He was one of a handful of Icelanders who fought with the Nazis in World War II. Brynhildur's grandfather was the first president of Iceland, Mr. Sveinn Bjrnsson.

Translations



The novel was simultaneously published in German and has been translated to Danish, Norwegian, Polish, Romanian, Lithuanian, Russian, German, Italian, French, Catalan and English. In France the young translator Jean-Christophe Salan was awarded the Prix de traduc-tion Pierre-Franois Caill, for the best translated book of 2014. In Spain the website todolitera-tura.es picked the "La mujer a 1000" as the best book of 2014.

* 'Kvinden ved 1000: Herbjrg Maria Bjrnsson fortller', trans. by Kim Lembek (Reykjavk: JPV tgfa, 2012; Kbenhavn : Lindhardt og Ringhof, 2013) [Danish]

* 'La femme 1000', trans. by Jean-Christophe Salaun (s.l.: Presses de la cit, 2013) [French]

* 'Kobieta w 1000C: na podstawie wspomnie Herbjorg Mari Bjornsson', trans. by Alicja Rosenau (Krakw: Znak, 2013) [Polish]

* 'La mujer a 1000', trans. by Enrique Bernrdez (Barcelona: Lumen, 2013) [Spanish]

* 'A n 1000 fokon: Herbjrg Mara Bjrnsson trtnete', trans. by Veronika Egyed (Budapest: Scolar, 2013) [Hungarian]

* 'La nonna a 1000: Herbjrg Mara Bjrnsson racconta', trans. by Silvia Cosimini (Milano: Mondadori, 2014) [Italian]

* 'Een vrouw op 1000: uit de memoires van Herbjrg Maria Bjrnsson', trans. by Marcel Otten (Utrecht: Uitgeverij De Arbeiderspers, 2014) [Dutch]

* 'Zhenstsjna pr 1000C', trans. by Olgi Markelovoj (Moscow: Ast, 2015) [Russian]

* 'Gruaja n 1000', trans. by Agim Doksani (Tiran: Ombra, 2016)

* 'Kvinnen ved 1000: Herbjrg Mara Bjrnsson forteller', trans. by Silje Beite Lken ([s.l.]: Cappelen Damm, 2016) [Norwegian]

* 'Woman at 1000 degrees', trans. by Brian FizGibbon (Chapel Hill: Algonquin books, 2018) [English]

* 'Eine Frau bei 1000: aus den Memoiren der Herbjrg Maria Bjrnsson', trans. by Karl Ludwig Wetzig (Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta, no date) [German]

* 'Femeia la 1000C', trans. by Ioana Miruna Voiculescu (Bucharest: ART, 2020) [Romanian]

Adaptations



A stage-version written by the author (along with Una Thorleifsdottir and Simon Birgisson) ran at the National Theatre of Iceland, in Reykjavik, in the winter of 201415, winning the Icelandic Theatre Prize for "Best Play of the Year 2015". In Denmark, the actress Solbjrg Hjfeldt created a one-woman monologue that was premiered in the spring of 2016 to critical acclaim.

Reviews



* Soffa Auur Birgisdttir, ' "[...] mrg eru sjlf n, kona" ', 'Tmarit Mls og menningar', 73 (2) (2012), 137-143.

* Alda Bjrk Valdimarsdttir, 'Hann lagi okkur rsi hverri su: Ellefu lf og Konan vi 1000', 'Skrnir', 186 (spring 2012), 147-165

*

*

References



Category:2011 novels

Category:Icelandic novels

Category:Novels set in Iceland

Category:Icelandic books

Category:Icelandic-language novels

Buy Konan vi 1000 now from Amazon

<-- Return to books from 2011



This work is released under CC-BY-SA. Some or all of this content attributed to http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?oldid=1091949916.