Novel
Angels of the Universe
Englar alheimsins
Einar Már Guðmundsson · 1993
Synopsis
A novel whose narrator, Páll, tells his own life, from a happy childhood in a Reykjavík undergoing rapid change, between the fifties and the eighties, to the adolescence in which schizophrenia appears, then to repeated stays in psychiatric hospital. His voice rises and falls with his moods, from elation to dejection; he looks for the event that gave birth to the chaos within him and meets other patients, each with a story of their own. Black humour tempers the distress.
Context
The book appeared in 1993. Páll is an invented character, inspired by the author's brother, who had schizophrenia and died a year before publication; the story also draws on the history of the Kleppur asylum in Reykjavík. The jury of the Nordic Council, which awarded it in 1995, praised a gaze cast on the reality we have grown used to calling normal. Translated into English by Bernard Scudder and into French by Catherine Eyjólfsson for Flammarion in 1998, it was brought to the screen in 2000 by Friðrik Þór Friðriksson, from a screenplay by the author, and is still studied in Icelandic schools.
Who it is for
For readers who want to enter mental illness through the voice of the one who lives it, with a humour that erases none of the pain.
Prizes and reception
Winner of the Nordic Council Literature Prize in 1995, it has done much for the understanding of mental disorders in Iceland.