Sigrún Pálsdóttir

WINNER

Iceland-Sigrún Pálsdóttir_CR-Fr‚ttablaĞiĞ - Stef n Karlsson

Biography

Sigrún Pálsdóttir is a writer and historian. Born in Reykjavík in 1967, she completed a PhD on the history of ideas at the University of Oxford in 2001, after which she was a research fellow and lecturer at the University of Iceland. She worked as the editor of Saga, the principal peer-reviewed journal for Icelandic history, from 2008 to 2016, and she has been a freelance writer since 2007. She first came to prominence as a writer of historical biographies. Her debut in 2010 was the acclaimed Þóra biskups (Thora: A Bishop’s Daughter), followed by Ferðasaga (Uncertain Seas) in 2010, the story of a young couple and their three children who were killed while sailing from New York to Iceland aboard a ship torpedoed by a German submarine in 1944. Her first novel, Kompa (That Little Dark Room), was released in 2016 and her second, Delluferðin, in late 2019. Pálsdóttir’s biographies have been nominated for the Icelandic Literary Prize, the Women’s Literature Prize and the DV Cultural Prize for Literature. Her book Ferðasaga was chosen as the best biography of 2013 by booksellers in Iceland. Kompa, her debut novel, was nominated for the Icelandic Women’s Literature Prize in 2016 and in 2019 was published in the US by Open Letter (University of Rochester’s literary translation press) under the title History. A Mess.

Nominated book : Delluferðin (Embroidery)

Summary

How do you turn old gold into priceless treasure? At the turn of the 20th century, Sigurlina finds herself in a hopeless situation. She is the motherless daughter of an eccentric father, who expects her to spend her life helping him catalogue Icelandic archaeological artefacts. But Sigurlina has her own ambitions of education and excitement and after a harrowing experience, takes fate into her own hands. She disappears from Reykjavik, along with a historical relic from her father’s collection. Through a series of incredible events, the artefact is unveiled at The Metropolitan Museum of New York. Meanwhile, officials in Iceland launch their own investigation into the theft of the artefact.
“Embroidery” has been described as a modern picaresque, a tragicomic tale about the preservation of cultural treasure, an intriguing perspective on the coincidences that have determined their place in history and a winding story of the human fates that underpin it all.

Excerpts

Related publications

Various authors

Special publications
2023

Various authors

Anthology
2021