Heaven and hell trilogy

Somewhere in Iceland, sometime in the early part of the last century, a small, fragile boy struggles forward in the snowdrifts above the icy fjords. In his backpack, he carries a book of poems that recently caused the death of his best friend on a stormy sea. The boy plans to return the book to its original owner and join his friend in the realm of the dead. But life, it seems, is not so easy. An unexpected encounter, a kind word and a few warm blankets give him a chance to stay alive. But can someone who has lost everything find their way back to the living? Can someone who thought he had no one have a family again? And will he survive if he later has to leave his newfound home for a mission that could easily cost him his life? Jón Kalman Stefánsson's elemental, poetic narrative tells the story of a boy struggling with blizzards and teetering between the worlds of the living and the dead over three volumes. As we read, we are introduced to the everyday life of the early 1900s in the shadow of glaciers, where, alongside the all-powerful merchants, doomed ship captains and troubled priests, the poor and women could only be supporting characters in the island's great story; but Stefánsson presents this remote, ruthless and yet breathtakingly beautiful region in their voices and from their perspective. Born in Reykjavík in 1963, Jón Kalman Stefánsson is one of Iceland's most important contemporary authors, having been nominated four times for the Nordic Council Literature Prize and one of his books for the Man Booker International Prize. His novels have been translated into several European languages. One of his main works, the Heaven and Hell novel trilogy published between 2007 and 2011, is now available for the first time in Hungarian, translated by Veronika Egyed.