THE REVIEWS ARE ROLLING IN (AND SOME INTERVIEWS AS WELL)
Sjón’s book tour of the US West Coast and the book launch in New York City was a great success with good attendance at his events in the various book stores and academic settings. And to the pleasure of his editor at FSG it resulted in some nice interviews on top of the good reviews that followed the release of the three books. (Photo by Steve Rhodes shows Sjón in serious storyteller mode at the Booksmith in San Fransico.)

REVIEWS
The Globe and Mail in Toronto
The Slate Book Review
The Bookslut
The Wall Street Journal

INTERVIEWS
Newsweek/The Daily Beast
The Paris Review story on Sjón’s, Björk’s and Hari’s NY event
The Coffin Factory

………..

US TOUR 2013
To celebrate the publication of three of his novels in the US, by Farrar, Straus and Giroux, Sjón goes on a reading tour of the West Coast and visits New York for a singular book launch event.

Richard Hugo House, Seattle, Tuesday, April 30, at 7:00 pm
In talk with Ryan Boudinot. Musical intervention by the Redwood Plan.
See more here.

Powell Books, Portland, Wednesday, May 1 at 7:30 pm
Author talk and booksigning. See more here.

Hilton SF Financial District, San Francisco, Friday, May 3 at 2:00 pm
In talk with Vendela Vida. See more here.

The Booksmith, San Francisco, Friday, May 3 at 7:30 pm
Author talk and booksigning. See more here.

Hilton SF Financial District, San Francisco, Saturday, May 4 at 1:30 pm
Panel discussion with Nordic colleagues Hanne Ørstavik, Steve Sem-Sandberg, Naja Marie Aidt and Rosa Liksom. See more here.

UC Santa Barbara, Santa Barbara, Monday, May 6 at 3:30 pm
In talk with professor Helen Morales. See more here.

Scandinavia House, New York, Thursday, May 9 at 7:00 pm
Book launch event. Sjón introduced by Björk. Talk moderated by Hari Kunzru.
See more here.

 …………... 

STOP THE PRESS!
From the Mouth of the Whale has been shortlisted for the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award. Read all about it here.

A marine fable of rare beauty and originality
Two excellent reviews of The Whispering Muse have appeared this month. One in World Literature Today, see here, and the other in The Quarterly Conversation, see here.

The 29th of January will see a world premiere by the Ensemble Intercontemporain and the SWR Vokalensemble Stuttgart of a new composition by the Czech composer Ondrej Adamek to one of Sjón’s ‘stone’ poems.

The piece is called ‘kameny’ and the performance takes place in the Cité de la Musique in Paris at 20:00 hrs. The British composer George Benjamin conducts. Read more on the home page of the Ensemble Intercontemporain, here.

A new app featuring the song Björk wrote to Sjón’s poem ‘solstice’ is out as a free and jingling, interactive christmas card.
Find it in the iTunes store, here.

The covers for the Farrar, Straus & Giroux editions are in!
Next May FSG will publish The Whispering Muse in a hardback edition and Sjón’s other two novels translated into English, The Blue Fox and From The Mouth Of The Whale, will simultaneously be published as paperbacks.

…………. 

Augu mín sáu þig/Tavo Akys Maté Mane/Made in Secret has been adapted for a puppet and object theatre in Vilnius. Adaption and direction is by Karolina Žernytė, music by Raimundas Eimontas, and the director herself performs with Rokas Petrauskas. The premiere is on the 26th of October in a performance venue named Menų spaustuvė/The Arts Printing House. See here.

This is the second time Sjón’s novel has been adapted for theatre. The first was a radio adaption made for RÚV (The Icelandic National Broadcasting Service) that in 2009 became a finalist for the Prix Europa, Radio Arts Prize.

The White Review interviews Sjón in its latest online edition.
The best-tasting puffin is soaked overnight in milk. ‘Then give the milk to the cat’, says Sjón. Read more about literature and exotic cooking here.

“Sjón is a magpie, taking myths and stories from disparate times and places, and weaving them together.  The results are not whimsical – Sjón does not shy away from unpleasant truths, either in this world or the realms of myth – and there is a fierce intelligence behind the genial, seemingly rambling narratives.”
Kind words for “The Whispering Muse” from Lucy Dallas’ review in the 7th of September issue of The Times Literary Supplement. Read it here.

The acclaimed Somali novelist Nuruddin Farah names Sjón’s “The Blue Fox” as his “Book of a Lifetime” when asked by The Independent newspaper.
See his article here.

“In tight, sharp and, at times hypnotic, prose, Sjon mixes Greek legends with Icelandic myth to create a starkly original fable of his own”
“The Whispering Muse” is reviewed in the pan-European magazine Cafe Babel. Read it in English, German, French, Italian, Spanish or Polish.

BREAKING NEWS!
The great American publishing company Farrar, Straus and Giroux has acquired the U.S. and Canadian English rights to Sjón’s latest three novels with plans to publish them in the late spring of 2013 with “The Whispering Muse” as a masthead.

“A playful mixture of myth and fish from a unique Icelandic voice …”
In The Guardian “The Whispering Muse” receives a warm recommendation from Michael Faber an author who more than knows his way on the borders of the fantastic and the real. Read here.

Upcoming events in the UK this summer, where Sjón talks about his novel “The Whispering Muse” that has just been published by Telegram Books:

Worlds Literature Festival, Norwich, 22nd of June at 2 PM. See here.
London Literature Festival, Southbank, 6th of July at 6:30 PM. See here.
Edinburgh International Book Festival, 13th of August. More soon. 

Sjón has been in the UK talking about “The Whispering Muse”.
On the 9th of June Sjón was at the Hay Festival with Madeilen Miller, author of  ”The Song of Achilles” talking to Jim Naughtie about myths and why they matter. On the 11th of June he visited the wonderful Bath bookshop Mr. B’s Emporium and gave a talk on how he came to write “The Whispering Muse”. And on the 12th of June he met up with A.S. Byatt who recently published a marvelous retelling of the Nordic myths – Ragnarök – and the ever fertile Adam Thirlwell at the London Review Bookshop in London where the talk was also myths and how they inspire contemporary writing and thought. (As seen in the photo above. © artificebooks.wordpress.com.)

In May Sjón will be in AUSTRALIA as a guest of the Wheeler Centre in Melbourne and the Sidney Writer’s Festival.
On the 14th he will be in Melbourne and share the stage with Roddy Doyle as a part of the “10–Ten Writers, Five Double Bill” series: See here.
In Sidney he will take part in different events, among them a discussion about his work in different fields on the 17th and a panel discussion on myths, with American novelist Jesmyn Ward, on the 19th.

STOP THE PRESS!
“From the Mouth of the Whale” has been shortlisted for the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize 2012!
The  £10.000 prize is divided between author and translator, in this case Sjón and the marvelous Victoria Cribb, should they be lucky. This year six books translated from German, Icelandic, Chinese, Hebrew and Italian are nominated, among them are Umberto Eco’s “The Prague Cemetary” and Yan Lianke’s ”Dream of Ding Village”. See the whole list of nominations here.

“The Whispering Muse” (Argóarflísin) will be published on the 11th of June by Telegram Books in the UK. In his kind endorsement of the book the novelist David Mitchell says:
“THE WHISPERING MUSE is a quirky, melodic, ticklish, seamlessly-translated, lovingly-polished gem of a novel. Sjón’s work deserves space on any self-respecting bookshelf of European fiction.” (Order it here.)

“Something strange and wonderful has washed up on our shores for these long winter’s nights.”
So begins a splendid review about “From the Mouth of the Whale” in the Washington Post.

British Kashmiri author Hari Kunzru names “From the Mouth of the Whale” as his book of the year in an interview with the Booktrust
Read the whole interview with Hari about his own great novel “Gods Without Men”, aliens, deserts and gods in search of humans on the Booktrust’s website.

“A macskaróka” – as “Skugga-Baldur” is called in Hungarian – is chosen by a jury of literary critics as the fourth most interesting new translation published in Hungary in 2011.
If your skills in the Hungarian language allow you can read all about it in the online version of the current affairs magazine Magyar Narancs.

“From the Mouth of the Whale” is a fascinating, unsettling experience and Victoria Cribb is to be commended for capturing the author’s unique voice in her English translation
Or so it says in a glowing review of both book and translation in Publishing Perspectives.

“From the Mouth of the Whale” is one of The Scotsman’s Books of the Year, chosen by Nick Barley, director of the Edinburgh Book Festival
“Wild, hallucinatory and bleak, From the Mouth of the Whale, by Icelandic novelist and poet Sjón, is one of the most captivating and challenging books I read this year.” More in The Scotsman.

The foreign rights of “The Blue Fox” (Skugga-Baldur) are sold to China.
One of China’s biggest publishing house of foreign fiction, Yilin Press in Beijing, has aquired the rights to publish Sjón’s award winning novel in Chinese.

“From the Mouth of the Whale” is reviewed in the Publishers Weekly
According to the Publishers Weekly “From the Mouth of the Whale” is “a blithe, rhapsodic novel [...] a work charged with lyrical energy and metaphysical purpose”.

THE FRANKFURT BOOK FAIR

Sjón took part in diverse events at the Frankfurt Book Fair between
the 13th and 16th of October as Iceland was this year’s guest country of honor.

“Ásgerður Júníusdóttir and Sjón in der Blaue Sofa”
Interview on the ZDF about “Das Gleißen der Nacht”, poetic farmers and other things Icelandic, crowned with Ásgerður singing “Draumalandið” and “Litla flugan”.

“Icelandic Author Sjón on Myths and Crackpot Theories”
A Book Fair interview with the international trade magazine Publishing Perspectives.