Dear reader! Sorry for being so late to announce this but Andri Snær Magnason has finally released a NEW BOOK. Tímakistan is the latest book by Andri Snær Magnason and it just won the Icelandic Literary Award in the Childrens/YA category. This is the third time Andri Snær Magnason wins this award, and the third category he wins.Dreamland won the prize for Non fiction in 2006 and The Story of the Blue Planet for Fiction. (Before a children’s/YA category was established). The book has been doing very well on the book market here in Iceland appealing to readers of all ages and the theatrical Rights have been sold to the City Theater of Reykjavík.
Tímakistan (The Casket of Time) is also nominated for the West Nordic Children’s book Award and it won the Bookseller Award as best YA book of 2013 in Iceland.
Tímakistan contains 300 pages of strange events. It starts when things are looking bad and economists predict a very bad year, Sigrun’s family is lucky – they can crawl into their BlackBoxes® and wait for better times. But one day, Sigrún’s box opens and she is confronted by an abandoned city in ruins, with everyone stuck in black boxes waiting for things to get better.
Sigrun meets a strange old lady in a house full of lost children. The old lady tells them a story of a greedy king who conquered the world but yearned to conquer time. With a magical casket, transparent like glass but made of spidersilk, with such a dense weave that even time cannot penetrate the walls, the king can spare his beautiful princess the ugly days, the dark days, the rainy days, the normal days and the worthless days. One day a small boy opens the casket and the princess discovers that 20 years have passed, the kingdom is crumbling and the king has gone mad.
There seems to be a connexion of some sort between the old woman’s story and Sigrun’s world. She and her friends must find the link, which will hopefully show them how to fix the world.
Tímakistan was published in Icelandic by Mál og menning in 2013. 300 pages. Cover made by Katla Rós.
Awards:
Winner of The Icelandic Literary Award 2013 – (Children’s/ Young Adult)
Bookseller Award – Best YA book of 2013.
Nominated for the West Nordic Children’s book award.
Rights for the play sold to the City Theater of Reykjavík