The Thaw

A man takes his terminally ill daughter whale watching. An aging musician performs at a beauty contest with Rod Stewart, and learns that he missed his one shot at fame. In the title story, two brothers fight over a woman--with disastrous consequences. The novella "Gaga," first translated into English in 1988 and described as a "sci-fi Don Quixote," follows a man who believes his ordinary surroundings in Reykjavík conceal a sinister Martian plot.

In these ten stories, award-winning Icelandic author Ólafur Gunnarsson depicts the inner lives of his countrymen with stark, brutal clarity. Blending the domestic and the surreal, the comic and the tragic, Gunnarsson's taut language creates a world that readers will find at once fascinatingly alien and surprisingly familiar.