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Transnational Series: Sigrún Pálsdóttir in conversation with translator Lytton Smith at Brookline Booksmith

September 24, 2019 | 7:00 pm - 8:30 pm

Free

Sigrún Pálsdóttir will be in conversation with Lytton Smith, the translator of her novel History. A Mess. This event is part of our Transnational Literature Series. For more information contact Shuchi Saraswat at shuchi@brooklinebooksmith.com.

While studying a seventeenth-century diary, the protagonist of History. A Mess. uncovers information about the first documented professional female artist. This discovery promises to change her academic career, and life in general … until she realizes that her “discovery” was nothing more than two pages stuck together. At this point there’s no going back though, and she goes to great lengths to hide her mistake–undermining her sanity in the process. A shifty, satirical novel that’s funny and colorful, while also raising essential questions about truth, research, and the very nature of belief.

Sigrún Pálsdóttir completed a PhD in the History of Ideas at the University Oxford in 2001, after which she was a research fellow and lecturer at the University of Iceland. She worked as the editor of Saga, the principal peer-reviewed journal for Icelandic history, from 2008 to 2016. Her previous titles include the historical biography Thora. A Bishop’s Daughter and Uncertain Seas, a story of a young couple and their three children who were killed when sailing from New York to Iceland aboard a ship torpedoed by a German submarine in 1944. Sigrún’s work has been nominated for the Icelandic Literary Prize, Icelandic Women’s Literature Prize, HagÞenkir Non-fiction Prize, and the DV Culture Prize. Uncertain Seas was chosen the best biography in 2013 by booksellers in Iceland.

About the Translator:

Lytton Smith is a poet, professor, and translator from the Icelandic. His most recent translations include works by Kristín Ómarsdóttir, Jón Gnarr, Ófeigur Sigurðsson, Bragi Ólafsson, and Guðbergur Bergsson. His most recent poetry collection, The All-Purpose Magical Tent, was published by Nightboat. Having earned his MFA and PhD from Columbia University, he currently teaches at SUNY Geneseo.

Details

Date:
September 24, 2019
Time:
7:00 pm - 8:30 pm
Cost:
Free
Event Categories:
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Event Tags:
Website:
https://www.brooklinebooksmith.com/events/2019-09/sigrun-palsdottir/

Venue

Brookline Booksmith
279 Harvard St
Brookline, MA 02446
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Phone:
(617) 566-6660
Website:
https://www.brooklinebooksmith.com/

Did You Know?

Certain books were “banned in Boston” at least as far back as 1651, when one William Pynchon wrote a book criticizing Puritanism.