SIMON DUFF recommends a new album from renowned composer and oud player Anour Brahem.
A book of bewitching narratives
PAUL SIMON falls under the spell of little known authors from an island at the edge of the world
Reykjavik in close-up
JAMES WALSH has a great night in the company of basketball players, quantum physicists and the exquisite timing of Rosie Jones
A New Awakening: Adventures In British Jazz 1966 - 1971, G3, and Buck Owens
JAMES WALSH is moved by an exhibition of graphic art that relates horrors that would be much less immediate in other media
RON JACOBS welcomes the translation into English of an angry cry from the place they call the periphery
GUILLERMO THOMAS recommends a useful book aimed at informing activists with local examples of solidarity in action around the world
HENRY BELL is provoked by a book that looks toward, but does not fully explore the question of who gets to imagine the shapes of cities to come
Book of Reykjavik
Edited by Becca Parkinson & Vera Juliusdottir
Comma Press £9.99
OUT of habit, I normally ignore a book’s various prologues, acknowledgements and afterwords as needless embellishments. It is usually better for the reader to encounter fiction unencumbered by someone else’s well-meaning but agenda-ladened framing.
For this collection of 10 short stories by contemporary Icelandic writers, I would counsel the complete opposite.
For those readers, like me, who know very little about the Icelandic capital, Sjon’s foreword and the introduction by Vera Juliusdottir provide an essential ready reckoner, an important orientation without telling us how to navigate the contributions.
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