Absolution

Olaf Olafsson

Editions

Review

If you read only one novel by an Icelandic author, make it this one.  Starting in 1990’s New York, the tale takes us back to Iceland in the years leading up to the war, and then to Denmark under the German occupation.  The style is impeccable and clean - somehow mirroring the narrator’s attempt at detachment, as he forces himself to remember an act of betrayal that has haunted him for nearly fifty years.  His guilt and obsession with the past highlight the unexpected moral and psychological repercussions of our actions.  Both imaginative and stimulating, this relatively short novel is a small masterpiece.  What’s more, if you, like me, have a horror of reading books in translation (this prejudice is the result of years of language learning), then you’ll be relieved to hear that - as far as I can tell - Absolution was originally written in English. - review by Dan Fenton