Hallgrimur Helgason, "Woman at 1,000 Degrees"; Fiona Mozley "Elmet" (with Louis Bayard)

Hallgrimur Helgason and Fiona Mozley discuss their Algonquin Books published novels, "Woman at 1000 Degrees" and "Elmet" with author Louis Bayard at Politics and Prose on 1/17/18.

Spirited and defiant, octogenarian Herra Bjornsson, armed with the German grenade her father gave her during the Second World War, lies dying in a Reykjavik garage. Before she goes, she has a lot to say, and her deathbed monologue is at once a history of the 20th-century, a family memoir, and the self-portrait of a remarkable survivor. Born in Iceland to a prominent political figure who enlisted in Hitler’s army and abandoned his family, Herra struggled on her own through war-torn Europe. She later traveled to Eva Perón’s Argentina and the United States, married, had children, and lost her loved ones. As the pieces of Herra’s life come together, Helgasson, an Icelandic visual artist and translator, introduces an unforgettable narrative voice. His novel has won several international awards, including the Prix Millepages and the Grand Prix Littéraire du Web.

A finalist for the Man Booker Prize, Mozley’s debut novel is rooted in the wild dreams of fairy tales and the English countryside. The narrative follows the fiercely independent John Smyth as he carves out a life for himself and his two children in West Yorkshire. John built their house and most of what’s in it; the three live on food he hunts and what he earns as a debt collector for a local landowner. But John can’t protect his family “against the dark things of the world” indefinitely. One day, he too falls prey to the man who once employed him. As narrated by his thirteen-year-old-son Daniel, the story of the family’s fall from their Edenic existence is also a modern story of working-class resistance to the domination of wealth and property.

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Produced by Tom Warren