Overview

The narrator of Cow Seal is a woman who lives by Iceland’s northernmost coast, where the struggle for life is hard, winters attack with sea ice and cold. Her husband dies, a child dies, and other calamities follow, but the woman and her children never give up. They endure. The woman helps a seal give birth – the boundaries between man and animal, culture and nature disappear in this magical book. The text is chiselled, the poems traditional in form with alliteration and internal rhyme reminiscent of ancient metres which underscore the timelessness and relevance of the work to the constant struggle for life that is the lot of both humans and animals.

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9781911469933

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Gerður Kristný is a phenomenally energetic Icelandic writer, having produced 18 books of fiction and non-fiction prose, as well as children's books and poetry, in the 18 years since the appearance of her first. She has won numerous prizes and awards, from the Icelandic Journalism Award in 2005 to the Icelandic Literature Prize in 2010 for Bloodhoof. She says she chooses each word of her poetry carefully so rarely needs to revise and it certainly shows in this volume.

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