Overview

WINNER OF THE SWEDISH ACADEMY'S NORDIC PRIZE 2023 'A book like a blade of light, searching out and illuminating the darkest corners of history . . . It's vivid, unputdownable, alive, and written with unerring artfulness and subtlety.' Neel Mukherjee Gunnar Kampen grows up in Reykjavik during the Second World War in a household fiercely opposed to Hitler and Nazism. A caring brother and son, at nineteen he seems set to lead a conventional life. Yet in the spring of 1958, he founds a covert, anti-Semitic nationalist party with ties to a burgeoning international network of neo-Nazis - a cause that will take him on a clandestine mission to England from which he never returns. In this striking novel, inspired by one of the ringleaders of an Icelandic neo-Nazi group formed in the late 1950s, Sjon masterfully constructs the portrait of an ordinary young man who becomes a right-wing zealot. Exposing the roots of the far-right movements of today, Red Milk is a timely reminder that the seeds of extremism can be hard to detect and the allure of fascism remains dangerously potent.

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9781529355925

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Reviews

Sjon's policy of omission-of drama, psychology, violence, grandeur of any kind-results in a delicious tension. He tempts us to expect so much of the novel, and though he never provides the relief of clean culminations, he manages to keep the reader wanting. * Asymptote Journal * A slim forensic novel to strike a chill. * Saga * Sjon's prose is appropriately sharp and precise, illuminating the murky corners of his topic. -- Pippa Bailey * New Statesman * This is a landscape proper to a child's imagination, dreamlike but solid, with all the pronounced lucidity and wild agency that objects and colors assume . . . Sjon makes us think again about what empathy can - and frequently enough simply can't - achieve. -- Erica Banks * 4Columns * Like Iceland itself, Sjon's books are simultaneously tiny and huge, weird and normal, ancient and modern. Reading them feels like listening to that story of the beached whale: a wild invention that is actually a straight-faced confession. His books dance - with light, quick steps, never breaking eye contact - all over the line between the mythic and the mundane. -- Sam Anderson * New York Times * What Sjon leaves out of his work is as powerful as what he puts in. His fiction never seems to break into a sweat, yet it takes you a long, long way. * David Mitchell * The chapters move like the prose equivalent of flip-book images, quick and evocative . . . Sjon's story, based on research into a real-life band of Icelandic neo-Nazis, dovetails nicely with current preoccupations about the resurgence of fascism . . . By tarrying for a while with the everyday - the ultimate site of real politics - Sjon gets at how endlessly interesting it can be, and how much it can contain and conceal. -- Peter C. Baker * New York Times Book Review *

Sjón's policy of omission-of drama, psychology, violence, grandeur of any kind-results in a delicious tension. He tempts us to expect so much of the novel, and though he never provides the relief of clean culminations, he manages to keep the reader wanting. * Asymptote Journal * A slim forensic novel to strike a chill. * Saga * Sjón's prose is appropriately sharp and precise, illuminating the murky corners of his topic. -- Pippa Bailey * New Statesman * This is a landscape proper to a child's imagination, dreamlike but solid, with all the pronounced lucidity and wild agency that objects and colors assume . . . Sjón makes us think again about what empathy can - and frequently enough simply can't - achieve. -- Erica Banks * 4Columns * Like Iceland itself, Sjón's books are simultaneously tiny and huge, weird and normal, ancient and modern. Reading them feels like listening to that story of the beached whale: a wild invention that is actually a straight-faced confession. His books dance - with light, quick steps, never breaking eye contact - all over the line between the mythic and the mundane. -- Sam Anderson * New York Times * What Sjón leaves out of his work is as powerful as what he puts in. His fiction never seems to break into a sweat, yet it takes you a long, long way. * David Mitchell * The chapters move like the prose equivalent of flip-book images, quick and evocative . . . Sjón's story, based on research into a real-life band of Icelandic neo-Nazis, dovetails nicely with current preoccupations about the resurgence of fascism . . . By tarrying for a while with the everyday - the ultimate site of real politics - Sjón gets at how endlessly interesting it can be, and how much it can contain and conceal. -- Peter C. Baker * New York Times Book Review *

Sjon's policy of omission-of drama, psychology, violence, grandeur of any kind-results in a delicious tension. He tempts us to expect so much of the novel, and though he never provides the relief of clean culminations, he manages to keep the reader wanting. * Asymptote Journal * A slim forensic novel to strike a chill. * Saga * Sjon's prose is appropriately sharp and precise, illuminating the murky corners of his topic. -- Pippa Bailey * New Statesman * SELECT PRAISE FOR CoDex 1962: 'This is a work of great ambition ... above all it feels like a work of virtuoso narrative for its own sake; an Icelandic 1001 Nights' * The Sunday Times * Sjon writes with a poet's ear and a musician's natural sense of rhythm . . . has mastered (Gunter Grass)'s technique of merging history with high-speed comedy and surreal profundity . . . an heir of Mikhail Bulgakov and Laurence Sterne, eases literary references into the text as mere suggestions . . . His wild, subversive imagination is among his great strengths -- Eileen Battersby * Guardian * Bewitching . . . His stories compound the dreamscapes of Surrealism, the marvels of Icelandic folklore and a pop-culture sensibility into free-form fables. Call it magic realism under Nordic lights * The Economist * [CoDex 1962] consumed me for the better part of a week. I can only echo Loewe, with gratitude, exasperation and awe. This book's a bloody thief of time. -- Parul Sehgal * New York Times * This book is psychedelic, it's potent and it wants to consume the whole world . . . Sjon is a prodigal storyteller in all senses of the phrase . . . he is a master of atmosphere, a fine observer of the cross-hatchings of human motivation and a vivid noticer of detail. * New York Times Book Review * Sjon's novels are brilliant collisions of history and fable, psychology and fantasy -- Chris Power * Guardian * Sjon is one of our era's great writers. Like Ovid, Kafka, and Bulgakov, he is fascinated by metamorphosis and, from apparently limitless resources of the imagination, can convey what it must feel like. -- Charles Baxer * The Nation *

Sjon's policy of omission-of drama, psychology, violence, grandeur of any kind-results in a delicious tension. He tempts us to expect so much of the novel, and though he never provides the relief of clean culminations, he manages to keep the reader wanting. * Asymptote Journal * A slim forensic novel to strike a chill. * Saga * Sjon's prose is appropriately sharp and precise, illuminating the murky corners of his topic. -- Pippa Bailey * New Statesman * This is a landscape proper to a child's imagination, dreamlike but solid, with all the pronounced lucidity and wild agency that objects and colors assume . . . Sjon makes us think again about what empathy can - and frequently enough simply can't - achieve. -- Erica Banks * 4Columns * Like Iceland itself, Sjon's books are simultaneously tiny and huge, weird and normal, ancient and modern. Reading them feels like listening to that story of the beached whale: a wild invention that is actually a straight-faced confession. His books dance - with light, quick steps, never breaking eye contact - all over the line between the mythic and the mundane. -- Sam Anderson * New York Times * What Sjon leaves out of his work is as powerful as what he puts in. His fiction never seems to break into a sweat, yet it takes you a long, long way. * David Mitchell *

Author Information

Born in Reykjavik in 1962, Sjon is the author of the novels The Blue Fox, The Whispering Muse, From the Mouth of the Whale, Moonstone and CoDex 1962, for which he has won several awards including the Nordic Council's Literature Prize and the Icelandic Literary Prize. He has also been shortlisted for the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award and the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize, and his work has been translated into thirty-five languages. In addition, Sjon has written nine poetry collections as well as four opera librettos and lyrics for various artists. He lives in Reykjavik, Iceland.

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