Miss Iceland

Miss Iceland (Ungfrú Ísland) published in Iceland in 2018 and won the Icelandic Bookseller's Prize, and was longlisted for the Icelandic Literary Prize, and the Icelandic Women's Prize. Though set in 1960’s Iceland, this novel has an incredibly prescient and timely plot—that of an intellectual young woman trying to realize her dream of being a writer and determined to live on her own terms while being confronted with misogyny, sexism, and harassment. Olafsdottir also tackles issues of gender and sexuality in this novel, with one of the main characters a young gay man struggling to find his place in a homophobic, prejudiced era. Olafsdottir’s writing has been translated widely into twenty-two languages. To date, Miss Iceland will be published internationally in seven countries: France, Italy, Sweden, England, Norway, Denmark, and Iceland. Will appeals to fans of Writers & Lovers by Lily King, The Idiot by Elif Batuman[/i], The Wife by Meg Wolitzer, and Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by James Joyce. Hotel Silence won the Nordic Council Literature Prize, the Icelandic Literature Prize (the equivalent of our National Book Award) and the Booksellers Prize. Butterflies in November won the Tómas Gudmundsson Literary Award and was longlisted for the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize. It was named a best book of the year by the Financial Times and Independent , and it was widely reviewed in the New York Times , Boston Globe , New Yorker , O Magazine , New York Magazine , and Minneapolis Star Tribune . Olafsdottir’s English debut novel The Greenhouse (AmazonCrossing), sold over 100,000 ebooks; it won the DV Cultural Prize for literature and was nominated for the Nordic Council Prize, the Prix Femina, and Prix FNAC.