Safe Return Doubtful

Translated from Icelandic by Victoria Cribb.

This is a couple of hours wonderfully spent.
Reykjavík in October of 1918 has its problems; the long winter is approaching, a nearby volcano has erupted, and the Spanish Flu arrives on an incoming ship. Sixteen year old Máni Steinn spends many hours at the cinema, paying for admission with the money earned from his quick sexual with many of the city’s wealthy men. He lives in a small attic apartment with his great-grandmother’s sister, and has dropped out of school several years before. Sjón’s story then takes us through the pandemic, ten doctors dealing with ten thousand sick and dying in three hospitals. As the city recovers Máni, having played his part helping, returns to selling himself on the streets when something happens that changes his life forever.
It’s difficult to believe Sjón can cover so much in such few pages, but brevity is his forte. He is able to address serious issues while remaining playful, and to write with a bare prose without self-consciousness in explicit scenes.
Victoria Cribb’s translation is to be admired, a type of prose poem in spite of its graphic sexual scenes and the horrors of the Spanish flu.