Auður Ava Ólafsdóttir lives in Reykjavík. After studying art history in Paris, she directed the Museum of the University of Iceland. She is the author of several novels including “Rosa candida”, awarded by the Nordic Council Literature Prize, the highest distinction awarded to a writer from the five Nordic countries. She also received the Íslensku bókmenntaverðlaunin, the most prestigious Icelandic prize, for “Ör”, and in France the Prix Médicis ranger for “Miss Iceland”. (Replay)
Translation from Icelandic into French by Eric Boury.
Coming from a line of midwives, Dýja is in turn “mother of light”. Her parents run funeral parlors, her sister is a meteorologist: born, die, and in the middle a few storms.
As a hurricane threatens, Dýja helps deliver her 1 922nd baby. She tames the apartment inherited from her great-aunt, with its vintage furniture, flickering light bulbs and a banana box full of manuscripts. Because Aunt Fífa continued the great-grandmother’s work, inserting the stories of these women who roamed the moor in the blizzard with her own whimsical and visionary reflections on the planet, life – and light.
In the attic, an Australian tourist seems to have come from the antipodes simply to take stock. Decidedly, the human being is the most vulnerable animal on Earth, the thin thread that connects to life as fragile as an aurora borealis.” (Presentation of Zulma editions)