Dreamland – A Self Help Manual For A Frightened Nation

• Winner of the Icelandic Literary Award 2006
• Winner of the Bookseller Award for best non fiction 2006

With forword by Björk.

During dark times in Icelandic history, just before the economic crash of 2008, many of the most delicate highland areas of Iceland were threatened to be plundered to provide cheap energy for International Aluminium Corporations. The author takes the reader on a journey through present day Iceland, with detours to Okinawa Japan, Jamaica and Egypt. Dreamland is a deeply moving book about concerns of our times, knowledgeable and written with a rare passion that touches every reader. Dreamland is fun and activist. It is philosophical, political, full of humour and of amusing angles. It is serious but optimistic. And it has that “something” that singles out those books that find the pulse of their era. 

Dreamland has been made into a feature length documentary film. 

Praise for Dreamland:

,,Andri Snaer Magnason, whose scathingly funny critique of his country’s politics and society, Dreamland: A Self-Help Guide for a Frightened Nation, was a huge bestseller in this bookish country, told me this week: “In economics, they talk about the invisible hand that regulates the market. In Iceland, the free market became so wild that it was not fixed by an invisible hand, but an invisible guillotine. So, in one weekend, the whole class of our newly rich masters of the universe lost their heads (reputation, power, and money), and all the power and debt of the newly privatized companies fell into the hands of the people again.”

Rebecca Solnit – The Nation

“Dreamland,” a devastating polemic that puts Iceland’s environmental issues into a global perspective. The book has sold 18,000 copies — the equivalent, in percentage terms, of 18 million copies in the United States.

New York Times

So here they all were, one big unhappy family. The environmentalists were trying to save Iceland. The industrialists were trying to save Iceland. Everyone was trying to save Iceland.” A mental civil war,” somebody called it. A war of dreams.… Dreamland: A Self-Help Manual for a Frightened Nation, a surprise, runaway best-seller exposed the spell…

National Geographic Magazine

Andri Snær’s Dreamland provokes thought by telling us things we did not know and have therefore not had the opportunity to deliberate or discuss openly.

Vigdís Finnbogadóttir, former president of Iceland