A Parish Chronicle

From Iceland’s Nobel laureate, an essayistic tale of the unlikely miracles that return a church--fated to disappear over & again throughout time--to the same hillside

1882. In the still of morning, Ólafur sharpens his scythe on the bone-dry pavestones that separate his farmhouse from the rest of Mosfell Valley, where life revolves around sheep. The sound of his hammer rings out like a high-pitched bell over the tussocky fields. Across the valley, perched on a hill that hoards more sunshine than others, stands Mosfell Church. Nearby, the parish priest’s maid Gunna pours her ＂slosh,＂ a weak cup of coffee. Further afield in Reykjavík (＂down south＂ as the locals say) the general assembly decides to revisit an old plan to cut costs by consolidating small parishes, and calls for the demolition of Mosfell. Yet today a church stands on that same hillside--its sharp steeple silhouetted against the clouds, its crown bell hanging to the left of the altar. In A Parish Chronicle, celebrated novelist Halldór Laxness combs through the minutest details of history--from the location of the ancient burial mound of national hero Egill Skallagrímsson down to the latter part of the 19th century, when weak-sighted Ólafur and bawdy farmhand Gunna will each play an unlikely role in the parish’s stubborn survival. An intimate ode to the way of life in Laxness’s home valley, and a shrewd commentary on how history bends to the quirks of certain individuals--A Parish Chronicle abounds with life.

Halldór Laxness (1902-1998) is the undisputed master of modern Icelandic fiction. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1955 ＂for his vivid epic power which has renewed the great narrative art of Iceland.＂ His body of work includes novels, essays, poems, plays, stories, and memoirs: more than sixty books in all. His works available in English include Independent People, The Fish Can Sing, World Light, Under the Glacier, Iceland’s Bell, and Paradise Reclaimed.

Philip Roughton has translated the work of Halldór Laxness, Jón Kalman Stefánsson, Kristín Marja Baldursdóttir and many others. He has twice been awarded the American-Scandinavian Foundation Translation Prize for his rendering of Laxness’s work, in 2001 for Iceland’s Bell and again in 2015 for Wayward Heroes. He also received the 2016 Oxford-Weidenfeld Prize for his translation of Jón Kalman Stefánsson’s The Heart of Man. He lives in Iceland.

Translator Residence: Akureyri, Iceland

Salvatore Scibona is the recipient of a Mildred and Harold Strauss Living award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. His first novel, The End, was a finalist for the National Book Award and winner of the Young Lions Fiction Award. His second novel, The Volunteer, was called a ＂masterpiece＂ by the New York Times and won the Ohioana Book Award. His books have been published in ten languages. His work has won a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Pushcart Prize, an O. Henry Award, and a Whiting Award; and the New Yorker named him one of its ＂20 Under 40＂ fiction writers. He is the Sue Ann and John Weinberg Director of the Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers at the New York Public Library.