We're thrilled to publish Icelandic author/artist/poet/philosopher/Björk collaborator Oddný Eir, whose novel Land of Love and Ruins won the EU Prize for Literature and the Icelandic Women’s Literature Prize. In a starred review, Barbara Hoffert of Library Journal writes "Reading this lyrically, sometimes even deliciously written work is almost as good as going on one’s own spiritual quest,” and Kea Wilson Left Bank Books in St. Louis recommends it for "fans of Nell Zink's The Wallcreeper and perambulating literary memoirs like Patti Smith's M Train.” But perhaps the most enthusiastic praise comes from none other than the Icelanding conceptual rock goddess Björk, whose albums Biophilia and Vulnicura Eir co-wrote: "Oddný Eir is an authentic author, philosopher and mystic. She weaves together diaries and fiction. She is the writer I feel can best express the female psyche of now and has bridged the gap between rural Iceland and Western philosophy. A true pioneer!!!!!!!!” Just count those exclamation points! Read on for what other reviewers, librarians, and booksellers have been saying about Land of Love and Ruins.
Praise for Land of Love and Ruins, by Oddný Eir
“Winner of the EU Prize for Literature, this meditative novel by Icelandic shooting star Eir (she’s collaborated with Björk) features a nameless young narrator home again after a break up and launching a spiritual quest. She seeks peace and solitude in nature, visiting Iceland’s meadows and lava fields with a tentative new ornithologist boyfriend who for a time goes to live in a cave. But she’s also deeply sociable, sharing many homey moments with family, particularly her archaeologist brother, and traveling to Basel, Paris, and more in search of sustaining interactions with art and artists. In fact, the narrator herself is a writer deeply imbued with Iceland’s language and literary traditions. Without ever sounding like a screed, the book considers how we manage intimacy and live in a world rife with social and economic injustice. VERDICT: Reading this lyrically, sometimes even deliciously written work is almost as good as going on one’s own spiritual quest; it will have great appeal to any reader beyond thrill-seeking, shoot-’em-up fans.”
—Barbara Hoffert, Library Journal, starred review
“If you love the kind of novel that lets you wander with a fascinating mind for a while, this is your pick. Icelandic author Oddný Eir gives us the eponymous Oddný, an emerging novelist who's recently separated from a lover and is recording her thoughts piecemeal as she ambles through a new relationship and across countries. Part diary, part philosophy (think Pascal and Montaigne), always keen and true and delightfully smart, this is a book that I related to deeply and loved consuming in in small bites. Fans of Nell Zink's The Wallcreeper and perambulating literary memoirs like Patti Smith's M Train should give it a look.”
—Kea Wilson, Left Bank Books (St. Louis, MO)
“Somewhere within a constellation that contains Ben Lerner and Terry Tempest Williams, there shines Oddný Eir: poet, environmentalist, Bjork collaborator... Starting from a lovely story of finding a place for independence in a new romance, she creates something like an epic hymn to sustainability that winds its way back through an ancestral Icelandic past and forward into the uncertainty of global change. Every essayistic tangent in these collected diary entries—whose endless succession of memorial days includes Cream-Puff Day and the Feast of Psychoanalysis—folds itself back into the exceptionally tender core, which is all the more tender for being so fiery with passion."
—Jonathan Woollen, Politics & Prose (Washington, DC)
"[In Land of Love and Ruins] passages sometimes verge on the poetic, and a beautiful, satisfying insight can often be its own reward…. Land of Love and Ruins is a rewarding, if deeply reflexive little book. It pokes and prods at philosophy and sociology, but never excessively, always couching them in a framework of feeling and everyday life. The diary mode is again a useful vehicle for bringing together such varied directions: the narrator’s musings range from Icelandic sagas to Greek mythology; from Confucianism to Hannah Arendt…. Land of Love and Ruins is a meditation on the present condition, on how our fragmented emotional selves correspond to our fragmented economies, on how progressive-minded, socialist and feminist selves can still find solace in old traditions and familial histories.... The pleasure here is to be found in the journey."
“A writer ponders the sustainability of both her relationships and the environment in this autobiographical novel-in-diary-entries…. She goes bird-watching on a beach; ponders settling down and having kids in Reykjavik; visits ancient settlements, gravesites, and museums; explores the profundity of Snoop Dogg’s lyrics; and generally contemplates the meaning of home…. At her best, these ramblings suggest a modern-day Walden, in which a writer communes with the environment to better contemplate the complexities of being…. When she writes about the charm and beauty of the places she visits, you want to pitch a tent right alongside her…. a graceful vision of a slower, more emotionally in-touch way of life.”
“Sometimes, very seldom, a dedication page is all it takes to suck me deep into a book. ‘For ornithologists and archaeologists’ set me up for something strange and special, and I was blown away with this book. In a work structured in the form of a diary, a young novelist attempts to finds meaning in and through place through the exploration of birds and the physical structures we’ve created around us. Astounding.”
—Kate Layte, Papercuts J.P. (Boston, MA)
“It stands to good reason that the protagonist of Eir’s debut novel would idolize a legendary Icelandic heroine, Gudrun Osvifursdottir. Local lore has it that when Gudrun, who may or may not have been a real person, was asked about the men in her life, she famously replied, “To him I was worst whom I loved best.” The unnamed narrator of this tale in journal entries suggests that the same statement could be made about the way the Icelandic people treat their motherland. Trying to find her bearings after Iceland’s financial crisis, the narrator is additionally unmoored by her search for love. Even if the novel is a thinly disguised lament about environmental degradation and societal ills, which can be wearing, the narrator’s voice is refreshing, and her concerns are authentic; add to that a tour of gorgeous Iceland and parts of Europe through the eyes of a native. Eir’s narrator challenges readers: “Won’t you continue to be considered a nationalist if you say that the citizens of a country should be responsible for their fosterland and its natural resources?”
“Eir’s book is a profoundly philosophical look at being human in today’s world. She wrote this as a diary about finding a place where she can belong and feel at peace. In doing so, she brings rural Iceland and Western philosophy together. This is a universal idea and so many of us have done exactly the same kind of quest but this is the first that I have read from an Icelandic author and it is amazing and quite beautiful…. I do not remember reading anything quite like this before. Eir beautifully brings together autobiography and fiction as well as fantasy and philosophical inquiry. She deals with many of the questions that all of us face and while there are not always answers to be found, there remains a great deal to think about. For me, this is the purpose of literature and in that our author has succeeded. After all, all of us really want to find that place from which we can function at our best.”
“Combining an Icelandic sensibility enriched by nature with a cosmopolitan immersion into complexity, [Land of Love and Ruins] blends a journal with semi-(at least) autobiographical reflections…. This storyline charts a search for retreat and recovery.”
All Reviews and Features
Booklist: Land of Love and Ruins
Kirkus: Land of Love and Ruins
Library Journal: Worldwide Reading: Books Beyond the Mainstream That Take Us Far (starred review)
LitReactor: Bookshots: Land of Love and Ruins
Literary Hub: The Great Booksellers Fall 2016 Preview
Los Angeles Times: Love, Icelandically
PEN: The PEN 10 with Oddny Eir
Politics and Prose: Staff Pick: Land of Love and Ruins
PopMatters: An Ode to Total Immersion
Reviews by Amos Lassen: “Land of Love and Ruins” by Oddny Eir— Being Human
The Rumpus: The Saturday Rumpus Essay: Opening the Hump
by Oddný Eir
Translated from the Icelandic by Philip Roughton
“Oddný Eir is an authentic author, philosopher and mystic. She weaves together diaries and fiction. She is the writer I feel can best express the female psyche of now and has bridged the gap between rural Iceland and Western philosophy. A true pioneer!!!!!!!!”
—Björk
Paperback • ISBN: 9781632060723
Publication date: Oct 25, 2016