I walked along a shore, along the water’s edge, barefoot, feeling the rocks cut into the soles of my feet and the cold sea caress my toes. The sky above me was silent. All was white, and in my chest I felt a heavy throbbing; from some gentle vastness came a sign that, as for me, my days were as grass. Before me stood a grey horse. I passed through a gate on the shore and the horse entered the water as I turned inland. I was on a street. Rain was falling. Mist descended and enshrouded me in grey, and I saw Katrín cross the road, here in Valeyri, and head towards the shop, entering it. She reappeared with Lalli, and I watched as they crossed the street, leading two smartly dressed children, a boy and a girl, by the hand.
I was shrouded in grey. I was pure consciousness. Katrín was lost to me for ever – who, then, would be my guide along the narrow path that led across the scrabbles of rock, across boulders, gravel, scree, abyss, through howling wind, water, blizzard and brash ice, to the final gateway?
The mist. It comes in off the sea and slides along the spit.
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AUTHOR
Guðmundur Andri Thorsson was born in 1957 in Reykjavík. He works as a writer, translator, editor and newspaper columnist and has published ten books, including four novels. And the Wind Sees All was nominated for the Nordic Council Literature Prize 2012 and chosen as one of the fifty best books published in Denmark in 2014. It is the first of Thorsson’s books to be translated into English.
TRANSLATORS
Andrew Cauthery read Law at Oxford. After graduation, he played oboe in the Iceland Symphony Orchestra (and learned Icelandic). Björg Árnadóttir completed a three-year course at the National Theatre of Iceland Drama School. She has worked as an actor in Iceland and England.
Together, they have translated English books into Icelandic, including The Wind in the Willows for Iceland State Radio and A Map of Nowhere by Gillian Cross, and Icelandic books into English, such as three crime novels by Victor Arnar Ingólfsson and The Super Book of Science by Vilhelm Anton Jónsson.
Copyright
First published in Great at Britain in 2018 by
Peirene Press Ltd
17 Cheverton Road
London N19 3BB
www.peirenepress.com
This ebook edition first published in 2018.
First published under the original Icelandic language title Valeyrarvalsinn
Copyright © Guðmundur Andri Thorsson, 2011
This translation © Björg Árnadóttir and Andrew Cauthery, 2018
With special thanks to Gesche Ipsen, who edited And the Wind Sees All for Peirene.
Guðmundur Andri Thorsson asserts his moral right to be identified as the author of this work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.
This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not be resold, lent, hired out or otherwise circulated without the express prior consent of the publisher.
ISBN 978–1–908670–46–5
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organizations, places and events are either the product of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.
Designed by Sacha Davison Lunt
Photographic Images: avesun / 123RF Stock Photo (polka dot dress); Andrew Toscin / flickr / CC.4.0 (bike)
Typeset by Tetragon, London
Printed and bound by T J International, Padstow, Cornwall
This book with financial support from:
And the Wind Sees All Page 13