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Winner of the 1990 Icelandic Literature Prize
Few Icelandic authors have mastered the concise art form of the short story as well as Svava Jakobsdóttir. Her stories provide a powerful insight into Icelandic reality and strangeness, while simultaneously reflecting the multifaceted experience and complex relationship between the individual and society. They highlight the vulnerability and loneliness of humanity and are filled with existential peril as well as a unique beauty.
This collection brings together the stories of 12 Women (1965) and Under a Volcano (1990), providing readers with an overview of her career, from the sparse, classical nature of her earliest work with the more folklore influenced later pieces.
Svava Jakobsdottir (1930-2004) was one of Iceland's leading contemporary authors and her short stories, often depicting the lives of women, hold a special place in Icelandic literature. Jakobsdottir was also acclaimed as a playwright, literary scholar, and a novelist.
Meg Matich has received support for her literary translation work from PEN, Fulbright, the Icelandic Literature Center, and others, and frequently collaborates with UNESCO. She received a PEN/Heim Translation Prize for her translation of Magnús Sigurðsson's Cold Moons (Phoneme Media, 2017), which composer David R. Scott subsequently translated into a choral symphony. In 2018, Meg translated an anthology in honor of the world's first democratically elected woman president, Vigdís Finnbogadóttir (2019)/ She is the former director of The Poetry Brothel Reykjavik and producer of the upcoming immersive performance The Poetry Apothecary (Ljóðatek), in celebration of UNESCO Reykjavik's ten-year anniversary. Her translations have appeared in or are forthcoming from PEN America, Exchanges, Words Without Borders, Asymptote, Gulf Coast, and others.
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