Justice Undone (Shad Thames Books)

Now available in English, this Nordic Prize winner for 1988 is a story of incest and infanticide set in the remote hinterlands of 19th-century Iceland. ""Vilhjálmsson's hallucinatory imagination creates an eerily beautiful vision of things, Icelandic in far-seeing clarity, precision, strangeness. Unique and unforgettable."" - Ted Hughes. Based on a true story, Justice Undone is a compelling novel of obsession and aversion. An idealistic young magistrate (a figure inspired by the Whitmanesque Icelandic writer Einar Benediktsson) undertakes his first case. His geographical and emotional journey into bleak, unknown territory, where dream mingles sensuously with the world of the Sagas, tests him to the limit. ""A complex, poetic, psychological novel that becomes more rewarding as the reader progresses through it."" Booklist