Reykjavík Grapevine - 07.12.2012, Side 19

19 The Reykjavík GrapevineIssue 18 — 2012LITERATURE
THE FRESHEST FISH ....AND IDEAS!
SKÓLAVÖRÐUSTÍGUR 14 - 101 REYKJAVÍK - 571 1100
After years of study,
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self as just a kid from
up north, with a life-
time passion for fish.
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THE REAL ONE SINCE 2000
“To actually cease being a child, that’s
probably the greatest experience in
life.” So thinks Josh Stephenson, the
unusually sensitive and observant
teen narrator of Fridrik Erling’s ‘Fish
in the Sky,’ a recent English trans-
lation of Sveinn Ólafsson’s ‘Góða
ferð, Sveinn Ólafsson.’ Josh has just
turned thirteen and, according to his
mother, is “one year closer to being
considered a grown-up.” But getting
older isn’t helping Josh make sense
of life—it only seems to be compli-
cating things.
Like most thirteen year olds, Josh
occupies a purgatory somewhere be-
tween innocence and worldliness,
regularly bouncing between pure joy
and deep despair as he tries to navi-
gate the seemingly insurmountable
problems that crop up around him.
First, there are his parents: his most-
ly-absent father who spends nearly all
of his free time with his girlfriend or
drinking buddies and his ardently re-
ligious mother who is too exhausted
from working two jobs to pay much
attention to his problems. Added
to Josh’s list of worries are his re-
bellious older cousin—a girl—who
moved in with Josh and his mom
and is living in his closet, a vindic-
tive math teacher, humiliating gym
classes, the possibility that he has
fallen in love, and the horrifying fact
that he has started to get pubic hair.
“I’m like a piece of bread in a toaster,”
he thinks. “No matter which way I
turn, all around me are the glowing
iron threads that heat me up until I
start to burn around the edges.”
Fridrik captures the profound ex-
tremes that characterize adolescence
with a balance of poetical empathy
and sly humour, all delivered through
Josh’s sometimes wry and often per-
plexed observations. Of an irritating
but popular classmate, Josh ref lects
that “It is unbearable how shameless
and disgustingly free of low self-es-
teem he is.” While guiltily thumbing
through a nude magazine he admits
to finding “...at least two really hot
descriptions of copulation,” which he
doesn’t entirely understand. There is
self-awareness and self-depreciation
in Josh’s f lailing attempts to recon-
cile with the world around him that
ring very true to the teenage experi-
ence.
Although he spends most of the
novel navel-gazing, Josh does un-
dergo a significant transformation in
discovering the simple truth that ev-
eryone has problems (many of which
are more serious than his own), and
everyone feels alone in them. The
universality of this theme is further
underscored by the fact that in the
English translation, ‘Fish in the Sky’
has very few orienting details that
identify it as occurring in a particu-
lar country or even a particular time
period. It’s worth noting that Fridrik
completed the English version him-
self with reference to a translation
by the late, great translator Bernard
Scudder, to whom he dedicated the
book. All of the character names have
been anglicised, and while certain
small details may hint at the original
version’s Icelandic origins, it stands
as a story that could have happened
anywhere, to any young person.
- LARISSA KYzER
Over ten Icelandic novels have
been translated into English in
2012, as compared with the seven
Icelandic titles which were pub-
lished in English in 2009, 2010,
and 2011 combined. This boost
in English translation ref lects a
renewed international interest
in Iceland's contemporary liter-
ary scene: in 2011, Iceland was
the guest of honour at the Frank-
furt Book Fair and Reykjavík was
named a UNESCO City of Lit-
erature—the first city awarded
in which English is not the na-
tive language. In the same year,
AmazonCrossing—the American
retail giant's new literature-in-
translation press—committed to
publishing 10 new Icelandic nov-
els in English translation over the
next few years.
CONCERT
R E V I E W
BOOK
R E V I E W
Fish In The Sky
A Translation Boom in 2012
Written and translated by Fridrik Erlings
2012201120102009
★10
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