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Sögumaður
Ég hafði á þeim tíma jafnvel hugsað upp aðferðir til að ryðja þessum manni úr vegi, að koma honum frá á einhvern hátt, þótt útfærslan á þeirri gjörð væri aldrei þaulhugsuð. En þarna er hann sem sagt kominn. Ég hef ekki séð hann mjög lengi.
Á rigningardegi í júní, þegar England og Costa Rica eigast við í heimsmeistarakeppninni í fótbolta í Brasilíu, er þrjátíu og fimm ára gamall maður staddur á pósthúsinu í miðbæ Reykjavíkur. Í tösku sinni er hann með umslag og í umslaginu er handrit að skáldsögu. Á meðan hann bíður eftir afgreiðslu kemur hann auga á mann sem hann kannast við frá því fyrir rúmum áratug, mann sem um tíma var kærasti stúlku sem hann elskaði sjálfur úr fjarlægð. Minningin um hatrið á þessum manni heltekur huga hans og verður til þess að hann yfirgefur pósthúsið áður en hann nær að koma frá sér umslaginu.
Sögumaður er saga um eltingarleik.
Sögumaður er sjöunda skáldsaga Braga Ólafssonar. Bragi hefur einnig gefið út ljóða- og smásagnasöfn, og skrifað leikrit fyrir útvarp og svið. Fjórar af skáldsögum Braga hafa verið tilnefndar til Íslensku bókmenntaverðlaunanna og starfsfólk bókaverslana útnefndi tvær þeirra skáldsögu ársins, Samkvæmisleiki og Sendiherrann. Sú fyrrnefnda hlaut einnig Menningarverðlaun DV og Sendiherrann tilnefningu til Bókmenntaverðlauna Norðurlandaráðs. Þekktasta bók Braga erlendis er án efa skáldsagan Gæludýrin sem hefur komið út á fjölda tungumála.
Höfundur: Bragi Ólafsson
Á rigningardegi í júní, þegar England og Costa Rica eigast við í heimsmeistarakeppninni í fótbolta í Brasilíu, er þrjátíu og fimm ára gamall maður staddur á pósthúsinu í miðbæ Reykjavíkur. Í tösku sinni er hann með umslag og í umslaginu er handrit að skáldsögu. Á meðan hann bíður eftir afgreiðslu kemur hann auga á mann sem hann kannast við frá því fyrir rúmum áratug, mann sem um tíma var kærasti stúlku sem hann elskaði sjálfur úr fjarlægð. Minningin um hatrið á þessum manni heltekur huga hans og verður til þess að hann yfirgefur pósthúsið áður en hann nær að koma frá sér umslaginu.
Sögumaður er saga um eltingarleik.
Sögumaður er sjöunda skáldsaga Braga Ólafssonar. Bragi hefur einnig gefið út ljóða- og smásagnasöfn, og skrifað leikrit fyrir útvarp og svið. Fjórar af skáldsögum Braga hafa verið tilnefndar til Íslensku bókmenntaverðlaunanna og starfsfólk bókaverslana útnefndi tvær þeirra skáldsögu ársins, Samkvæmisleiki og Sendiherrann. Sú fyrrnefnda hlaut einnig Menningarverðlaun DV og Sendiherrann tilnefningu til Bókmenntaverðlauna Norðurlandaráðs. Þekktasta bók Braga erlendis er án efa skáldsagan Gæludýrin sem hefur komið út á fjölda tungumála.
Höfundur: Bragi Ólafsson
- GenresFiction
170 pages, Hardcover
Published January 1, 2015
4 people are currently reading
463 people want to read
About the author
Bragi Ólafsson
32 books35 followersBragi studied Spanish at the University of Iceland and the University of Granada. He has had a number of different jobs in Reykjavík, at the post office, in a bank and in a record store. He was also a member of the Sugarcubes, and toured with them in Europe and America.
Bragi's first published work, the poetry collection Dragsúgur (Draught), appeared in 1986. Since then, he has published other books of poetry, short story collections, plays and novels. His first novel, Hvíldardagar (Days of Repose) was nominated for the Icelandic Literary Prize in 1999 and the next one, Gæludýrin (The Pets) also in 2001. He received the DV Cultural Prize for the novel Samkvæmisleikir (Party Games) in 2004 and his novel Sendiherrann (The Ambassador) was nominated for the Nordic Council's Literature Prize in 2008.
Bragi is one of the founders of the publishing company Smekkleysa (Bad Taste) which has mostly put out music and organised various kinds of events.
Bragi's first published work, the poetry collection Dragsúgur (Draught), appeared in 1986. Since then, he has published other books of poetry, short story collections, plays and novels. His first novel, Hvíldardagar (Days of Repose) was nominated for the Icelandic Literary Prize in 1999 and the next one, Gæludýrin (The Pets) also in 2001. He received the DV Cultural Prize for the novel Samkvæmisleikir (Party Games) in 2004 and his novel Sendiherrann (The Ambassador) was nominated for the Nordic Council's Literature Prize in 2008.
Bragi is one of the founders of the publishing company Smekkleysa (Bad Taste) which has mostly put out music and organised various kinds of events.
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Displaying 1 - 15 of 15 reviews
July 9, 2018
In this meandering novel from the former bassist in The Sugarcubes, a character named an initial (when will this Kafkan cliché ever cease?) wanders around the Icelandic capital trailing a nemesis named Aron who used to sleep with the same woman he used to (or wants to) sleep with for 150 pages. Fragments of the protagonist’s past are revealed in untantalising dribbles, and the narrative voice flips between first and third persons, calling into question the author’s ID and narratorial truthfulness (like the nouveau roman never happened), and for the most part the novel describes, in plodding pedestrian prose, a string of unremarkable events and thoughts that take place over a short timespan and serve up no concrete reasons to care about the outcome of this mercifully brief tale of ciphers.
April 28, 2022
I like stories where seemingly nothing happens exactly, just thoughts and actions and sequences, and in their combination, there is a story. Lovely sentences and well crafted translation. I've enjoyed it without knowing the reason why it has been so. Must be the writing style.
October 13, 2018
All the way through this novel, by Icelandic author, Bragi Olafsson, I was thinking about "Waiting For Godot". The plot is a bit more elaborate, but nothing happens. Does that make any sense? Fears, memories, fantasies are omnipresent, yet nothing happens. This one is a bit of a fever dream, perhaps born of a deep Icelandic winter?
May 29, 2019
This is the first book I've read from Open Letter Press, and it certainly will not be the last. I fully intend to check out a few of the other books they've put out.
Ólafsson has written a modernist novel that reminded me of Paul Auster's Ghosts. Both feature a man stalking another man while he performs everyday tasks. G. is both the main character and the narrator, not meaning that the novel is told from his perspective as an intradiegetic character but rather that the novel is told in both first person POV and third person POV, both using G. as the narrator. Ólafsson treats us to an unflinching look at a man who is deeply dissatisfied with this life and mentally unbalanced. His parents were middle-aged when they had him, he lives in his parents' basement, he is working on a manuscript and has yet to find the courage to submit, and a woman he once loved did not reciprocate those feelings.
This book challenged me and required that I come to with a sharp mind. Ólafsson did one of my favorite literary tricks: misdirection. On the surface, this novel is about G. who is stalking a man, the source of his hatred, because of an affair that the man had with the woman he loved over a decade ago. We experience Aron Cesar, the stalkee, through G. playing omniscient narrator and giving us insight into the background and inner thoughts of Aron. However, because this is all filtered through G. we quickly see that G. is a man plagued by inner turmoil and loneliness. He relays the events of the novel through a more distanced and objective vantage point because he, like one of the characters in a movie both men sit through, suppresses his emotions. We see how his upbringing was one marked by repression, a repression that has carried over to his adult life.
While reading this novel, I struggled to believe that Aron even existed. Could it not be that this whole novel was in the mind of G. who was using his writing as a way to confess and deal with his emotional trauma that stems from his childhood? In any case, I will not soon forget the remarkable wit and talent it took to write such a short, complicated, and compelling novel.
Ólafsson has written a modernist novel that reminded me of Paul Auster's Ghosts. Both feature a man stalking another man while he performs everyday tasks. G. is both the main character and the narrator, not meaning that the novel is told from his perspective as an intradiegetic character but rather that the novel is told in both first person POV and third person POV, both using G. as the narrator. Ólafsson treats us to an unflinching look at a man who is deeply dissatisfied with this life and mentally unbalanced. His parents were middle-aged when they had him, he lives in his parents' basement, he is working on a manuscript and has yet to find the courage to submit, and a woman he once loved did not reciprocate those feelings.
This book challenged me and required that I come to with a sharp mind. Ólafsson did one of my favorite literary tricks: misdirection. On the surface, this novel is about G. who is stalking a man, the source of his hatred, because of an affair that the man had with the woman he loved over a decade ago. We experience Aron Cesar, the stalkee, through G. playing omniscient narrator and giving us insight into the background and inner thoughts of Aron. However, because this is all filtered through G. we quickly see that G. is a man plagued by inner turmoil and loneliness. He relays the events of the novel through a more distanced and objective vantage point because he, like one of the characters in a movie both men sit through, suppresses his emotions. We see how his upbringing was one marked by repression, a repression that has carried over to his adult life.
While reading this novel, I struggled to believe that Aron even existed. Could it not be that this whole novel was in the mind of G. who was using his writing as a way to confess and deal with his emotional trauma that stems from his childhood? In any case, I will not soon forget the remarkable wit and talent it took to write such a short, complicated, and compelling novel.
November 30, 2019
This book is basically an Icelandic version of Auster's City of Glass, but not as nicely done. While it does a good job of making the reader interested enough in "the chase," it lacks in developing any of the characters that much. Additionally, the author makes it easy to be disinterested in the main character, which I believe his intention. However, the ending makes that feeling feel a little flimsy as well. The one thing this novel does really well is highlight the racist attitudes that nonPoC western Europeans have with those who come from the global south. Overall, it was worth the dollar I paid for it and ate up a couple hours while I recover from being sick.
January 6, 2026
An interesting, kind of experimental book. Olafsson embraces the idea of the unreliable narrator. The protagonist, G., follows another character, Aron around. They appear to have a past - Aron dated a girl that G was interested in, but the actual events are murky and never become clear. G imagines a very colourful life for Aron, in contrast to his own rather dull one. There are glimpses of a bigger picture for G, but we never get a full reveal. I did enjoy it, though - there was enough there to keep me interested.
June 23, 2021
At one point this book describes a biography:
and that pretty much summed up my feelings about this book. I just didn't connect in any way with the "Narrator".
Something on every page screams out to the reader’s desire for the subject to be removed from play immediately, even though the reader knows it won’t happen until the end of the book, on page six hundred something.
and that pretty much summed up my feelings about this book. I just didn't connect in any way with the "Narrator".
December 28, 2022
There was some good prose in it and I liked the introspection but the protagonist wasn't likable enough or compelling enough for me to care about his life. I also didn't get why it kept switching from first to third person, maybe it was something I missed since it was difficult to keep my attention on it which sucks because it's such a short book too.
December 5, 2018
Short and dull, unfortunately. I really loved his first novel.
December 12, 2018
“G. feels how good it is to have someone concerning themselves with what you do, or where you go.” Brilliant!
April 23, 2019
Lu en français. Un récit un peu vide. Bien écrit, mais il se passe trop peu de chose et trop peu de réflexion, ou trop peu de pas mal tout pour valoir la peine selon moi. Décevant!
November 27, 2019
way too existential for me. at least it was short (151 pgs).
August 7, 2022
this book was a fever dream
January 26, 2016
Lúði eltir töffara um miðbæinn. Fyndin bók um "ekki neitt".
July 24, 2016
Mér fannst þessi góð, er svo hrifin af Braga Ólafssyni
Displaying 1 - 15 of 15 reviews