Reykjavík Grapevine - 07.06.2019, Síða 21

21 The Reykjavík Grapevine
Issue 09— 2019
method,” she states simply. “To speak
about the small things of everyday life
and make them stand for something
bigger—for something true. I’ve always
admired writers that can teach intel-
lectual topics and make them simple at
the same time. The more specific, the
more global. It’s like the ecosystem—
what is local becomes global.”
The risk in this ethos, Auður
explains, is in how a reader might
respond. “Someone might just find it
naive, or even see the Icelandic human-
istic way of seeing the world naive,” she
says. This is particularly true of ‘Hotel
Silence,’ the plot of which revolves
around a suicidal Icelandic man flying
to an unnamed country that is in the
process of recovering from a civil war.
“The idea of ‘Hotel Silence’, or sending
this Icelandic peace into the world—
it’s not to obviously save the world, just
to do some repairing,” says Auður.
The handyman, she explains,
represents the archetype of Icelan-
dic masculinity—the typical male
Icelander that can fix or repair every-
thing but himself. “He’s lost, and no
one can do everything to fix or repair
a broken world, but everyone can do
something. It’s also my thought that
if you know what’s going on and you
don’t do anything about it, you are the
responsible one,” she says. “It’s some-
thing I never preach, though, it’s some-
thing that the reader finds or does not
find.”
A transla-
tion of a
translation
The idea of translating her own
novels, or dealing with the transla-
tions of them, has become somewhat
of a running joke for the author. “‘The
Greenhouse’ has been sold and trans-
lated into 27 languages. ‘Hotel Silence’
a bit less, but almost as many,” says
Auður. “Korean, Chinese, Turkish,
Hebrew, Arabic, and more. In that case,
it is translated from English or French,
which means I don’t even know what
kind of book they are reading.” She
laughs. “That’s probably the reason
why they like them so much—they are
completely different.”
Self-deprecation aside, Auður tries
not to trouble herself with imagining
how her novels have evolved across
languages. “Sometimes it’s better not
to know,” she says. “I tell myself ‘what
you don’t know doesn’t exist,’ so I won’t
be able to read these translations of
translations—but it’s sweet.”
The death
of words
Auður just released ‘Miss Iceland’ in
2018, but she already has many new
projects on her mind. “I always have
three books in my head,” she grins.
“There’s a part of my brain where a
novel matures.”
The importance of language is
perhaps what’s closest to Auður’s
heart, possibly even more so than her
novels, and so once again, before she
finishes, she manages to distill down
her thoughts into a few meaning-
ful sentences. “You know, there are
around 3,500 languages in the world,
but 40% will die within 10 years,” she
says, with sadness crossing her face.
“Two languages die each month. With
each language we are losing a culture
and a way of thinking. There’s a differ-
ent way of seeing the world located in
every language.”
“I think that’s actually
my method, to speak
about the small things of
everyday life and make
them stand for something
bigger—for something
true.”