Gunnloth's Tale

This spirited and at times sinister novel ensnares the reader in a tangled encounter between modern-day Scandinavia and the ancient world of myth. In the 1980s, a hardworking Icelandic businesswoman and her teenage daughter Dis, who has been arrested for robbery, are unwittingly drawn into a ritual-bound world of goddesses, sacrificial priests, golden thrones, and kings-in-waiting. The boundaries dissolve and the parallels between Gunnloth's circle and the strange company into which Dis' mother is drawn as she fights to clear Dis' name grow ever closer. A moving, under-the-skin portrait of a mother in crisis, cast into a maelstrom of conflicting emotions by seeing her daughter under arrest and in prison. Translated from the Icelandic by Oliver Watts.