Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1510450 in Books
• Published on: 1995-11-01
• Original language: Icelandic
• Binding: Hardcover
• 168 pages

Customer Reviews

SO GOOD NOBODY SHOULD BE ALLOWED TO READ IT
Having read this book some years ago in Icelandic, I have ended up here because I hope to find a copy in English for my mother. Some of the reasons why are tragic, but suffice it to say that this (a book itself motivated by personal tragedy) would not be the book I chose for her now unless I knew the Icelandic original, at least, to be--as it is--an absolute "tour de force", simple and delicate, yet peculiarly rich and poignant (verging, it is true, on the sentimental at times), written as it is by a poet who has had every reason to bring immense respect and dedication to the entire project. I commend this book unreservedly.

Wow! Another excellent novel from this small country
Iceland has one of the highest rates of literacy in the world and it shows. This book is one of the great results of that... it's one of the best books I've read on psychological breakdown and manages to avoid many of the cliches in that field. While it does sail close to the pretentious at points, it avoids going over that edge, and raises some serious social points.

There's some great social commentary in this book... about Dagny the rebellious bourgeois girlfriend of the "hero", NATO, the way we can treat the mentally ill much like criminals, society-as-a-whole's own insanity... and as one reviewer has already quoted that key line "The madhouse is in a lot of places"*. Our society is completely hypocritical about madness.

This book doesn't feel like a translation to read.

The film is excellent too, but since it isn't in English, will be overlooked sadly. :(

* I wonder in fact if Arthur Koestler's (non-fiction) "The Ghost in the Machine" has influenced this book. Certainly some key ideas seem to be common to both of them.

Excellent incite into living and dieing with schizophrenia
I read this book while in Reykjavik on holiday, and prior to starting a PhD involving experiences of schizophrenia. As an experienced psychiatric nurse I found Gudmundsson's account (while set in Iceland) of schizophrenia, and living with it to be as relevent and as real to the UK, or I suspect anywhere in europe. The book is well written, comic, tragic, and creative.

"Have you been bright swan, to reality's empty shores, where the angels dance......? the opening of the 2nd chapter asks a question Gudmundsson attampts to answer, at the end of the book, you may not have been there, but you will have learned something- Should be key reading for any involved in Mental Health Care.

Colin