Icelandic author Auđur Ava Ólafsdóttir wrote a novel about the man who struggles with the banality of day-to-day life, moving forward after a divorce, and learning that his daughter is not his flesh and blood. He feels that he no longer exists. Once upon a time he was a husband, a father, a son. Now these roles have been eroded, taken from him by forces he struggles to understand. He is unable to find any reason to go on. So, for most of the novel, Jónas Ebeneser considers ways to commit suicide. At the beginning of the story, he interrupts his suicide by deciding to take a “vacation” to a war-torn country, where he will end his days.
The story is told in two parts. The first is set in Iceland and tells about how Jónas reached a point in his life where he wished to end it. The second is set in the unnamed former war zone and offers a different perspective on survival.
Once arriving in an unnamed country, Jónas discovers that his carpentry skills are in demand. He finds himself at a hotel in a land where people are still struggling to return to normalcy after surviving the horrors of war. Whereas Jónas can no longer find a reason to live, the people he meets abroad have suffered unimaginably, but remain determined to continue with their lives. And these people need him.
Ólafsdóttir seems to be arguing that it’s not always grief or pain that leads one to suicide, but merely the burden of existing without a purpose. And that, further, everyone has a purpose and is needed somehow.
The story moves at a consistently engaging pace, and Olafsdottir’s blend of sly humour and bleak realities makes for a life-affirming tale without any treacle.
The novel won Nordisk Raads Litteraturpris (Nordic Council Literature Prize) in 2018, and Icelandic Literary Prize for Fiction in 2016.