Novel
Tómas Jónsson, Bestseller
Tómas Jónsson, metsölubók
Guðbergur Bergsson · 1966
Synopsis
An old retired bank clerk, sick and cantankerous, fills school exercise books in his run-down basement, convinced that his memoirs will be a bestseller. Claiming descent from the bravest, bluest-eyed Vikings, he lines up grievances, rants, aphorisms and stray thoughts, worries that he is not a real writer and keeps returning to the miseries of the body. Nothing happens on the surface; everything is played out in this voice that mocks Icelandic society and the image it has of itself.
Context
The book appeared in 1966, ten years after Halldór Laxness's Nobel Prize, and caused a scandal. Often called the Icelandic Ulysses, it marks the beginning of the modernist turn in the country's literature, in which Guðbergur Bergsson is ranked with Thor Vilhjálmsson and Svava Jakobsdóttir; it left its mark on writers such as Bragi Ólafsson and Einar Kárason. A satire of the Viking image and of national self-assurance, it captures the anti-establishment spirit of its time. Translated into Danish and Hungarian, it appeared in English in 2017, translated by Lytton Smith, but has not been translated into French.
Who it is for
For readers who like furious monologues in the manner of Joyce, and a merciless satire of national pride.
Prizes and reception
A classic of Icelandic modernism, it was praised in 2017, on its publication in English, for its dark humour and strange charm.