Sólveig Pálsdóttir
Bio
Sólveig Pálsdóttir was born in Reykjavík September 13, 1959. She is a trained actor, graduated from the Iceland School of Drama in 1982, and has performed in theatre, television and radio. She completed a B.A. in comparative literature from the University of Iceland in 1996, followed by a postgraduate diploma in education in 2003. Sólveig taught Icelandic literature and linguistics, drama and public speaking for many years and has produced a number of radio programmes and managed cultural events. Since 2013 she has mainly focused on her writing.
Her first novel Leikarinn (The Actor) was published in 2012. Her fifth novel, Fjötrar (Shackles), was awarded the Icelandic Crime Writer’s Award, Blóðdropinn (The Blooddrop) in 2020, for the best crime novel of 2019.
Sólveig's first books were translated into German and published by Aufbau verlag. The two most recent have been translated into English and will be published by Corylus Books. Sólveig was the Seltarnarnes Town Artist in 2019.
Homepage: www.solveigpalsdottir.is
From the Author
I can still recall the moment when I understood how letters in a row created a word. A current of joy ran through my body and I read the word again and again. And the next one and the one after that, a whole sentence and finally a whole book. From that day on I read everything in sight. If I had finished all the children‘s books, I grabbed novels for grownups, folktales, biographies, memoirs, fairy tales … the possibilities were endless. Books opened up brand new worlds. I could travel everywhere in my mind. Roam around time and space, get to know characters and their lives in every corner of the world. Books offered me space to use my imagination to add to what I read and to continue the story in my mind after the final sentence. As a child I did not watch much TV, unlike books it offered no space for my own creativity.
In addition to books I read the newspapers, including the obituaries. They told stories about people and their lives. When I was a child there were not word-limit on these articles and many of them were quite interesting. Then theatre came into my world. I saw nearly every performance on stage and read plays available in print. The world continued to expand. I got to know Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, Aristophanes and later Shakespeare, Molière, Ibsen, Strindberg, Miller, Albee, Shaffer and Shephard to name a few. Also women who wrote plays as well as novels and poetry, such as Svava Jakobsdóttir and Nína Björk Árnadóttir. Poetry appealed to me as well, in particular through drama, because performing them opens up so many possibilities for interpretation.
But why am I recalling all this? Because all this literature became a part of me when I was young and added so much to my understanding of the world and the people living in it. I am convinced that reading all kinds of everything is not only a necessary foundation for writing fiction, but necessary in general, for everyone. We learn and at the same time we share people’s lives all over the world. We learn about the big picture through the small images, broaden our horizons and increase our empathy for others. Go reading! Go books!
Awards
2020 - Icelandic Crime Writer’s Award, Blóðdropinn (The Blooddrop), Fjötrar (Shackles)
2019 - The Town Artist of Seltjarnarnes
Miðillinn (The Medium)
Read moreÁ köldum vetrarmorgni er rannsóknarlögreglan kölluð út að Hólavallagarði. Innan um þá sem þar hafa verið lagðir til hinstu hvílu finnst lík eldri konu og fljótt er ljóst að dauðdaga hennar hefur borið að með saknæmum hætti. Hver getur hafa átt eitthvað sökótt við þessa eldri konu sem virðist hafa verið hlédræg, vanaföst og einförul? Þegar rannsókninni miðar áfram er greinilegt að ekki var allt sem sýndist í lífi konunnar og Guðgeir Fransson og teymi hans eiga fullt í fangi með að leysa þetta dularfulla mál sem meðal annars leiðir þau á miðilsfundi og djúpt í þyrnum stráða fortíð fórnarlambsins.. .
Fjötrar (Shackles)
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Refurinn (The Fox)
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Flekklaus (Blameless)
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Hinir réttlátu (The Righteous Ones)
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Leikarinn (The Actor)
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