Land of Love and Ruins

Winner of the EU Prize for Literature

“Oddný Eir is an authentic author, philosopher, and mystic. She weaves together diaries and fiction. She is the writer I feel can best express the female psyche of now.… A true pioneer!!!!!!!!” —Björk

“Part diary, part philosophy (think Pascal and Montaigne), always keen and true and delightfully smart, this is a book that I related to deeply and loved consuming in small bites. Fans of Nell Zink's The Wallcreeper and perambulating literary memoirs like Patti Smith's M Train should give it a look.” —Kea Wilson, Left Bank Books (St. Louis, MO)

“Somewhere within a constellation that contains Ben Lerner and Terry Tempest Williams, there shines Oddný Eir: poet, environmentalist, Björk collaborator…. Starting from a lovely story of finding a place for independence in a new romance, she creates something like an epic hymn to sustainability that winds its way back through an ancestral Icelandic past and forward into the uncertainty of global change. Every essayistic tangent in these collected diary entries folds itself back into the exceptionally tender core, which is all the more tender for being so fiery with passion.” —Jonathan Woollen, Politics & Prose (Washington, DC)

“I was blown away by this book…. A young novelist attempts to find meaning in and through place, through the exploration of birds and the physical structures we’ve created around us. Astounding.” —Kate Layte, Papercuts J.P. (Boston, MA)

Oddný Eir is an Icelandic author whose novel Land of Love and Ruins won the EU Prize for Literature and the Icelandic Women’s Literature Prize. In addition to writing fiction, poetry, and essays, she has worked as a gallerist and lecturer in the art world, an environmental activist, and a collaborator with the musical artist Björk, and has received advanced degrees in political philosophy from the University of Iceland and The Sorbonne.

Philip Roughton is an award-winning translator of Icelandic literature, currently residing in Reykjavík.